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It’s a banquet out there, if you know where to look

By Debbie Gardner
debbieg@thereminder.com


Naturalist and popular library guest lecturer Rich Giordano doesn’t just talk about the fresh, free wild foods available around us everywhere. The former herb garden supervisor at Sturbridge Village lives the wild edibles lifestyle on his land in West Brookfield.


With sustainability and self-sufficiency on the upswing in popular interest, Giordano’s approach to using what’s growing around us seemed intriguing. So in early July, Prime made the trek from East Longmeadow to Giordano’s All Hill Farm for a guided walk around his property.


Practicing what he preaches


The 52-year-old farmer had been thinning a patch of what I identified as soap flowers near his modest home when we arrived. Years ago on the Cape, I’d learned from a local that you could crush the white blooms, add some water and get a bubbly liquid that was pretty good at cleaning your hands.


But that was the extent of my wild plant knowledge – save that the dandelions we all hate in our lawns are actually a pretty nutritious spring green.  So with Giordano in the lead my son Evan – acting as my photographer – and I set out to get acquainted with the wild foodstuffs growing all around us on his property.


And with his philosophy of maintaining an edible landscape rather than a neat lawn, barn, garden and orchard, the choices were abundant.


Giordano said he “got into” edible plants shortly after college, when he abandoned his early plans to teach and spent 10 years travelling around the country following the band the Grateful Dead – mostly as a hitchhiker.


“It was nice to be able to get free food,” he said. “That, and I like to know what things are, I like to have things classified. Pretty much all of the birds around here, I know what they are [and] most of the plants.


“Most [people] don’t care… ‘a weed is a weed’,” Giordano continued, “But there’s so many different things, and if you know what they are, almost everything has a use to it.”


Like the soap flowers, which he pointed out usually grow wild in meadows and by the sides of many roads.


“If you know what they are, it’s free soap,” he said.


Don’t trust - become you own expert


As we moved further into his property, Giordano emphasized that anyone interested in becoming a wild forager first needs to become a well-researched expert.


“A precursor to my talks are, ‘don’t trust me at all, don’t believe anything I tell you, you should know it all yourself’,” he said, adding “There are plenty of great books out there where you can research this stuff.


“And if you go by memory – ‘I think this is what Rich showed me’ – that’s a really horrible way to do it,” he said.


He illustrated the importance of knowing what you’re eating by relating a story he tells at all his talks:


“I was hitchhiking out in Oregon and I met this guy from Idaho and we ended up in New Mexico with a whole bunch of people on a tour bus. He was one those people that to me seemed very knowledgeable about edible plants and he had these little beans.”


His “expert” urged the group to try them, as he believed they were the beans used in an Indian manhood ceremony.


“I thought, ‘Cool, I trust this guy’,” Giordano said. “Everybody who ate them became violently ill [with] projectile vomiting and passing out.” When he researched the beans later he discovered “It was a ceremony to become a man if you survived eating these things.


“The moral is – don’t believe anybody. You have to know it for yourself. And if you’re not sure, cross-reference it against three or four books,” he said.


‘The other [important] thing is where you pick it from,” he continued. “You obviously don’t pick [your wild food] by the side of the road or next to a nuclear power plant – the quality of where you are picking from is important in the quality of the food, so some place without chemicals and relatively pristine is what you want.”


The edibles around us


We hadn’t walked too far when Giordano stopped to pluck what looked like a tender variety of clover, pale green, with a tiny yellow flower. It looked very similar to a weed I’d recently uprooted in my shade garden. He identified it as a variety of Oxalis – or Wood Sorrel – commonly known as sour grass.


“Clover isn’t going to have heart-shaped leaves, it’s going to have more rounded leaves,” he pointed out, letting us give the plant a closer inspection. He said the plant has a lemon-peppery flavor when eaten raw, and is especially refreshing on a hot day.


He had common variety of Yarrow – something many gardeners plant for its decorative flowers – growing not far away. Though not really edible, he said the plant had several medicinal uses.


“It will stop bleeding, and it has antimicrobial properties” Giordano said. “If you cut yourself, you can dry Yarrow and pack it in there; it’s a great way to heal wounds.”


Milkweed was another plant he said often grows in semi-urban areas.


“You can eat the sprouts when they first come up; I personally don’t like them but [you can eat] the newer leaves before they flower, and some people fritter up the little pods,” he said, adding Monarch butterflies are particularly partial to the plant, which helps the ecosystem.


Under a nearby Hickory tree, Giordano noted that there were a dozen varieties of edible plants – most growing wild – and some hostas, which he did plant.


“They’re really good, they taste sweet, the smaller leaves are better,” he said of the variegated hosta plant, identical to the ones I have growing around my deck at home.


Not far away, he pointed to a plant with a tufted red flower. Identifying it a Bergamot, he said it could be used to make “a really nice tea.”


He also took a moment to locate and show us a patch of lamb’s quarters, which he said was easier to grow, and more nutritious than spinach.


“These things will grow six feet tall, and are better for you than spinach, but people pull it out. It will grow with next-to-no water, and it is better for you than spinach,” he said. “Stuff like this, if you let them go to seed in your garden, anything you are weeding out is food.”


The red root pigweed he pointed out next was, he said, a form of Amaranth. “The leaves are edible, the seeds are an edible grain,” he said.


Common day lilies, which grew in riotous clumps near his barn, also have edible parts.


“They make a nice tuber that you can eat, kind of like a potato, you can eat the pods before they open up, [and] you can eat the flowers. I’ve dried the flowers and put them in soup, it makes it a little more gumbo-y,” he said. The dried flowers can also act as a laxative, he added. You can also eat the leaves.


Spying a patch of singing nettle – a plant Giordano said everyone hates – he noted it’s another nutritious plant that is not only edible when small in the spring – about six to eight inches tall –[you need to cook it to get the sting out], but also can be used to make fabric.


The last plant he asked us about was the one I knew was edible – the dandelion.


“You know you can eat dandelions, have you eaten dandelions?” Giordano asked. When I answered no, he added, “That’s one of the things I ask and almost always get that answer.


“People that do eat them almost always have an ‘O’ at the end of their names. I’m a Giordano; it’s not a big deal to eat dandelions, I’ve done it since I was a kid, but a lot of people don’t like to step out of their comfort zone.”


He said the flower buds, sautéed with butter and salt and pepper, taste like corn on the cob. And you can use dandelions to make wine.


Free food everywhere


Giordano said the fun of doing plant walks like the one we took around his yard – and those he hosts for libraries – is that “you never know what you’re going to find.”


But even when you know what you think you are looking at, check before you bite.


“The key thing is not just to get a book, but to get several books, and cross-reference,” he said. “You want to be sure.


It’s like “You don’t go diving into a pond, you walk in ankle deep, if you dive in headfirst you’re going to break your neck,” he said in illustration.  “Know what [a plant] is – have a good couple of books – or find someone who knows what they’re doing.


“And once you learn [to identify edible wild plants], it’s simple,” he said.



It’s a banquet out there, if you know where to look
It’s a banquet out there, if you know where to look
It’s a banquet out there, if you know where to look
It’s a banquet out there, if you know where to look
It’s a banquet out there, if you know where to look
It’s a banquet out there, if you know where to look
It’s a banquet out there, if you know where to look