One of the most vivid descriptions of the joys of foraging for wild food was written by Edna Lewis in “In Pursuit of Flavor,” the 1988 follow-up to her influential book “The Taste of Country Cooking.” She wrote in the present tense about the tastes from her childhood in Freetown, Virginia, where both cultivated and wild land offered sensory delight:
“Beyond the garden is the orchard… and beyond the orchard are the fields and woods, where wild things grow – watercress, mushrooms, strawberries, blackberries, grapes, and nuts. Perhaps it is because of the natural, undisturbed compost that nurtures them year after year, or perhaps it is because they grow only where the soil, light and humidity are right for them, but wild things never fail us. They always taste good, which is why if you see only a handful of wild nuts or a cupful of berries, you should pick them. They have a flavor nothing else has. If you transplant a wild plant to the garden it will never taste the same.”
The impact of having been raised in an environment that was both psychologically and physically nurturing stayed with Lewis. As one of the first evangelists of the value of farm-to-table food, Lewis’ relationship to food defined a philosophy for a faction of chefs, diners and home cooks who have sought to question the wisdom of the industrial agriculture era.
To many people, the question of whether an urban environment can incorporate the kind of nurturing qualities found in a rural farming community doesn’t seem worth asking. Cities have been notoriously depleted and toxified by centuries of industry. In Baltimore, the very walls and pipes have poisoned generations of children. For many, urban environments are not only not nurturing – they are hostile.
Nonetheless, a growing number of public health and municipal planning professionals have taken notice of the foragers who do venture into city parks, highway medians or grassy lots to gather edible plants and fungus that most people don’t even know are there.
Baltimore is sometimes pulled into these conversations by chance. The Center for a Livable Future (CLF) at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health is located here, and naturally their initial research often gathers data locally.
More recently, one of the CLF’s most well-known areas of study is food waste. The center has also been producing research on a wide range of interconnected issues from food deserts/healthy food priority areas to health concerns resulting from agribusiness.
In December 2017, they released the findings of a study done in a partnership with the US Forest Service. “Researchers surveyed 105 foragers in Baltimore to get data on: forager demographics; commonly-foraged foods; the locations of foraging activities; motivations for and barriers to foraging; and the contribution of foraged materials to foragers’ diets.”
I was one of the participants of this study. The results have given context beyond the anecdotal about who else is “out there,” gathering in Baltimore, what they are gathering, and why. Most, like me, are white women in their mid-thirties. Most have a college degree and earn 20-40k in annual income. The average years of foraging experience is less than five. Foragers reported gathering “a diverse array of plant and fungal materials which, in some cases, constituted an important fraction of an individual’s overall diet. Despite this,” the report notes, “foraging remains largely unrecognized in urban policy, planning, and design, except where prohibited by regulations governing public parks and other green spaces.”
Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants: the book that started my foraging fascination
Researching the history of foraging is an exercise in futility. Where a behavior was once a normal part of survival, it’s not worth writing too much about in books or newspapers. The term “gathering” was more commonly used until the last few decades. What is easier to find is the *decline* of foraging. Old newspapers would occasionally mention unfortunate people who picked the wrong mushroom, but there were no forceful admonitions. In 1894 the Baltimore Sun reported that edible mushrooms were growing abundantly that September but that “it requires an experienced person to distinguish them from the poisonous toadstools.”
Nearly a century later, in 1958, the Hagerstown Daily Mail printed a column by a Dr. Van Dallen entitled “How to Keep Well.” His first advice on how to keep well? “Don’t gather mushrooms…. Even the experts have been known to make mistakes,” the doctor wrote.
It would seem that the popularity of foraging waned until its resurgence in the 1990s, but it never fully went away.
In 1998, one of the first ever studies of urban foraging was conducted right in Baltimore by the now-defunct Community Resources, Inc, “a nonprofit organization promoting community stewardship to restore our urban environment.”
The results are fascinating. Forester Paul Jahnige observed a diverse array of people collecting edible and medicinal items in the city parks. With Community Resources, he produced a paper filled with stories from actual foragers, including elderly African Americans who gathered poke greens, children shaking mulberries from city trees, and a Korean family who would make an annual trip to gather Chinese Chestnuts before cooking them at home, together. The paper determined that “urban forest product collectors come from a wide diversity of socio-economic, age, gender, and ethnic groups and institutions.”
They also determined that the needs and interest of these foragers was not considered before park planning decisions were made. The paper cites the proposed removal of the Chinese Chestnut trees for road-widening. While neighborhood residents, traffic engineers and park officials held many meetings about the project, “the collectors of these nuts were not even considered. They had no voice in the decision. Their use of the trees did not count.”
A lot has changed in the intervening years. Eric Kelly of Charm City Farms feels that Baltimore is doing more and more to encourage foraging and urban agriculture. “I think that they are [encouraging foraging] to a certain extent.” He cites Baltimore Housing’s Adopt-A-Lot program as one example. “You can get involved with Tree Baltimore, Parks and People and other non-profits [focused on] green space, and become part of that community and get involved with maintenance. They are open to conversations about how the areas are tended to.”
Charm City Farms conducts workshops on foraging itself as well as follow-up processes like making rope and processing acorns. At their farm and work-shed in Johntson Square, the concepts of urban versus rural sometimes collide in amusing and enlightening ways. Local teenagers stop by to marvel at the slabs of deer meat and discards, while survivalists-in-training from the suburbs make a show of nonchalance.
Starting friction fires and making your own ropes and acorn flour may be useful skills to have, but even Kelly doesn’t believe that foraging can truly provide enough food to live on. “It can round out a diet pretty well, and I wouldn’t expect to go out and get a full meal but what you’re going to get at a grocery store will never come close to the freshness and goodness of foraged foods.”
Nutrition may not be the most beneficial aspect of urban foraging at any rate. The family ties and connections to traditions first mentioned in Jahnige’s survey are a theme in subsequent studies, including the most recent one completed by The Center for a Livable Future. A 2013 study in Seattle asserted that “urban foraging maintains traditions and social ties while deepening connections with nature.”
Increasingly, municipalities are considering the benefit in allowing and even fostering these activities. The Seattle study conclusion stated that “seeking wild foods and medicines in the city can be seen as a way in which foragers assert their rights to the natural resources that support their wild food and health practices.”
Delving into issues of planning (or any issues, really) in Baltimore is particularly fraught. Any discussion is remiss without consideration of the racial inequality that is built into the very layout of the city. As (some of) Baltimore’s citizens and media have become increasingly interested in understanding this fact, professor Lawrence Brown has become a de-facto interpreter. His analysis of the segregation and the resources allocated to “The White L and the Black Butterfly” elevated the discussion in the wake of the 2015 unrest. I reached out to him to inquire whether seemingly trivial subjects like urban foraging have a place in the reparations of Baltimore’s segregationist culture and policies.
“Urban planning around increasing resources is always worthwhile for Black Butterfly neighborhoods. Baltimore Apartheid operates on a basis of segrenomics that Noliwe Rooks defines as ‘the business of profiting specifically from high levels of racial and economic segregation’ (from her book Cutting School) intentionally reduces access to resources and allows White neighborhoods to hoard them,” Brown says. “Certain environmental efforts may not be a priority in many Black Butterfly neighborhoods… where people are struggling to survive day-by-day. But they are worthwhile. The efforts to plant a garden or fruit trees should not be isolated or a one off project. They should be connected with pressing issues like providing employment or safe spaces or teaching children or reducing redlining.”
One study has pointed out, for instance, that access to park land in Baltimore is inequitable by race and income. Another obvious concern would be environmental contaminants, which often tend to make their way into the lands that disadvantaged people live and depend on, whether legally, by corrupt corporations, or just plain lack of sanitation services.
The Center for a Livable Future is planning to follow-up with further study of contamination concerns. Study co-author Keeve Nachman says “we needed to get an understanding of what foraged items people were most likely to consume and where they are getting them, since both of these are essential to know in order to try and make sense of whether exposures to these contaminants are of concern. It’s somewhat inevitable that exposures to contaminants are going to happen in the urban environment – the real question is whether or not the levels and timing of these exposures are concerning. Now that we know quite a bit about foraging patterns in Baltimore, further work will allow us to answer this question with a lot more confidence.”
A meat-parking plant dumps waste into the Gwynns Falls, Water and Me
As a lifelong forager in suburban and rural environments, the thought of toxins has passed my mind. As much as I love a good morel hunt, my favorite foraging memories involve gathering blackberries with my grandmother as the cars rushed by us on the highway. I wondered if I should worry about car exhaust, but the taste of a fresh ripe blackberry beat out my concerns.
As for foraging in the city, I once didn’t consider it an option. Then, in the mid-2000’s, I had a coworker, Aliza Sollins, who would come into our office in Bolton Hill with a bag full of edible items found in the nearby alleyways or overgrown hedges. Aliza’s connection with food systems eventually led her to a career gardening work with refugees and Baltimore children, tackling issues of education and food access. She is currently working at the community organization Annie E. Casey Foundation. She says “Foraging helps me to reconnect the idea of food as nature. It’s different than gardening because while gardening is something that humans must control and maintain, foraging something growing wild or that has gone feral… gives the sense that nature is enduring and abundant. …. foraging is definitely a nice starting point of intersection between connecting people to the plants around them. People tend to be more interested in a plant if it can be of value to them in some way.”
Aliza told me she always felt appeal in possessing the knowledge and ability to forage for food, but echoed Kelly’s opinion that urban foraging is impractical as a large component of anyone’s diet: “Foraging is also not a good way to ACTUALLY survive unless you have a lot of land because it’s so hard to get enough calories from random plants, it more about the idea of survival…a sense of resilience.”
1911 “Handbook of Nature Study”
Adopt-A-Lot aside, Baltimore doesn’t tend to be very cutting edge about these types of things. That is part of the reason that this study’s Baltimore focus is exciting.
Inquiring about the intersections of the food waste and foraging studies presents some questions of interpretation. Nachman says, “On one hand, we could consider that all unforaged forageables in the urban environment are a form of wasted food… many of them are nutrient dense and pack a real punch when it comes to supplementing the diet. Thankfully, the environmental and public health consequences of wasting food in this context are negligible, as the inputs to production are virtually nonexistent (since many of these items are typically considered weeds). On the other hand, we have learned that there are very real concerns related to over-foraging; for example, with some species, there is a potential for harvesting to occur to such an extent that the plants won’t grow back, which have obvious negative consequences on food availability.”
Eric Kelly from Charm City Farms feels that “in [city] limits its especially beneficial to encourage foraging because we’re not disturbing a habitat or ecosystem… not one that’s not already ruined anyway… whereas parks in the county are very sensitive towards that kind of thing.”
The interchange between humans and plants in the city creates intriguing possibilities.
Leakin Park, Cyndy Sims Parr on flickr
If you’re hiking through Leakin Park during a leafy time of year, there are moments you could forget you’re in the city. Franklintown Road winds around the south end of the park, largely quiet. The streams, ruins and recreational structures create intrigue scattered throughout the park. This remote feeling has enabled the conditions for Leakin Park’s notorious reputation. Longtime residents in the surrounding neighborhoods know the stories of the discarded bodies found in the park dating back to the 1940′s. Those stories were amplified by the Serial Podcast; now, people who couldn’t have named a Baltimore park make jokes about ‘the bodies.’
While outsiders and naysayers crack jokes, many citizens find respite within the city’s green spaces, reaping physical and mental health benefits in the process. Could foraging help repair the relationship Baltimore citizens have with this park?
Heide Grundmann from Friends of Leakin Park is aware of foraging activities in the park, but the park stewards are cautious to condone it. “in general the park system does not allow taking things from the park, excepting fallen acorns and similar fallen fruits. Over the years we have observed significant loss of habitat and wildlife due to climate change and overpopulation of deer, who eat young plants and undergrowth. It takes a well-informed person to forage carefully without causing detrimental effects on the area. During the October Mushroom Festival guided walks occur to teach mushroom identification.”
The CLF study may enable Baltimore to strike a balance. Marla Emery, the US Forestry Service researcher who collaborated on the study believes that it’s possible and worth pursuing. “As a scientist, in general, and a federal scientist in particular, it’s my job to provide information that will support land managers in making those sorts of decisions. Current strategies for managing hunting and fishing definitely provide potential models. In the not-too-distant future, we hope to convene a group of urban public land managers, non-governmental organizations, foragers, and researchers to review the state-of-the-knowledge about urban foraging and consider whether there might be a pathway to safe, sustainable foraging in parks and other city green spaces.”
Many ‘urban foragers,’ myself included, feel that foraging can have benefits beyond the free food. Increasingly, the studies seem to confirm this feeling.
Aliza puts it best:
“Foraging helps me feel more connected to the city because it helps you connect to secret, special spots (like the herbs growing at the base of the statue in Mt. Royal!). It makes you value public space. It’s funny because when I was in Kentucky, you would think that there is so much land to access there, but really most of the land is other people’s property unless you go to a big state park. I realized that Baltimore is so special because there are so many shared small public spaces. The city’s vacant lot adoption program is really special.
Staying connected to nature as the source of food is really powerful, and also helps to maintain honor for our bodies and the earth.”
Foraged-ingredient recipes on OLP: