If You Know Foraging, How Difficult Is It To Live off the Land?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 9 มิ.ย. 2022
- If you watch a lot of foraging content, it might be easy to imagine that, given enough knowledge on the topic, it would be simple to just walk out and gather sufficient food to survive for the day. Interestingly, reality is a little bit more complex...
- แนวปฏิบัติและการใช้ชีวิต
not that difficult foraging, i once found a massive field with tons of potatoes, carrots, turnips, cabbage and cauli, we took as much as we could carry, then a man in the distance started shouting, he was so far away i couldn't hear what he said, i imagine he shouted well done, can he have some for his mother fuller
@robert charlton you stole someone 's food . How dense are you to not understand that these vegs had been grown by someone ? Shame on you
@@marie34K how can you not understand i was trolling with a stupid comment? How dense are you, I knew someone would say something just like you did, congratulations on being dumb
I think that place was what we call an 'allotment'.
😂
@@jeremiahbolton2278 It's a joke, dude.
There's a reason most of our hunter gatherer ancestors hugged the coastline. It's much easier to subsist on the range of fleshy plants, seafood, shellfish etc at the coast.
I'd say fish and other seafood is 90% of the reason. It's such a good way of getting food.
True but also in the Neolithic it was also just far easier to travel along the coasts rather than try to venture through the forrest if you could avoid it. In Denmark we find literally no neolithic settlements that are in land before the rise of agriculture, instead people lived in semi-permanent settlements along the coasts and used the sea to travel. So for example the cultures on the east side of Jutland were more closely connected to those in Funen than they were those on the west side because to reach them you had to travel through deep forest.
thats not true
@@Hi-oo5xb lol yes it is
@@edenwildfood8589 they're called hunter-gatherers, and not fisher-gatherers for a reason.
the "our hunter gatherer ancestors hugged the coastline" statement is complete conjecture.
The first person POV + names of plants displayed at the top feels like a survival video game! Like every time you discover a new plant you add it to your encyclopedia/library 🤣
Video games are based off reality
therefore reality is the OG video game!
@Hanna P - Yeh, just like Red Dead Redemption 2....I really enjoyed the herbalist challenges 👍
skyrim modders are insane in this new video
i was expecting to hear a bell every time a new plant appeared but it would´ve gotten annoying quickly! hah
Yeah reminds me of Kingdom Come Deliverance, you can do foraging too in that game.
Archaeologist here, I thought that people viewing this video as well as Mr. Shrimp himself (or should I say Mr. Tout) would find some comparisons to ancient (and in some cases modern) hunter gatherers interesting. Obviously, living via hunting and gathering is viable, as that's how humans have primarily lived for the majority of our past. However, it has some special conditions that the modern forager in an otherwise modern lifestyle will have difficulties fulfilling. I am writing this while watching the video, so at least a part of this may have been addressed already in the video in the later parts. Apologies for that, haha.
Firstly, hunting and gathering is generally a very mobile lifestyle. You talk a lot in the video about seasonal availability, which is a major factor here. A H&G group will move with the environment, taking advantage of different environments and resources in them at different times of the year. Sometimes hunting will be a major factor, sometimes gathering, usually of a variety of different species. Not only will the main group itself move bases throughout the year, but many H&G groups would also have a variety of splintering going on from their main camp. Different sub groups would make gathering and hunting trips to different areas (as well as resource gathering trips to places like flint mining spots to craft tools, or to collect a specific plant resource like birch bark) and then bring back what they got to the main group. All of this movement around is of course generally not possible for a modern person living in a stable address for most of the year. The latter part about splinter groups brings up another important aspect, though.
H&G groups were just that, groups. The size of the groups allows for a two factor capacity for resource exploitation; firstly, multiple people will be able to hunt or gather more effectively, covering greater areas, such as through the splintering I mentioned above, and will also allow for a specialization to specific resources. Different persons will gain an expertise for specific species of animals or plants. While the degree to which people specialize in the modern world is far greater than in the past, there were still things that individuals would have done better than other things.
This also brings up the third aspect, the knowledge how to utilize these things. You can live off the land, but it takes a lot of skills and study. It's easy to consider past peoples dumb, or "primitive" (a word which I absolutely hate), disregarding the technologies they would have built up around these methods of gathering and hunting their food. We are smart, yes, and we know lots of things. But it's possible, and I would personally believe likely, that people in the past had more knowledge about their environment than we do now, which allowed them a far greater ability to use it for survival.
Fourth and perhaps one of the major aspects that we have to contend with in the modern world, even if you were to set up a whole group that was mobile along the lines I've outlined and did the research to be able to properly exploit the resources you find, is that the environment today is quite different from back then. The modern landscape is dominated by agricultural, industrial, and urban areas; all three of these severely limit the growth of a variety of species, both plant and animal, that you would have otherwise been able to exploit. In addition private property laws, like Mr. Shrimp talks about in the video, limit the degree to which one can take advantage of anything you find.
Is living in a hunting and gathering lifestyle impossible in the modern day? No, but that has a caveat; you probably can't live like that in any place in for instance western Europe, or similarly highly agricultural or industrial area. Hunting and gathering groups do persist to this day, but the areas they live in tend to be marginal areas that would otherwise be impossible to exploit via agriculture or industrial activity. I find the idea of establishing a H&G group in a place like England to be a near impossibility. However, humans are extremely smart, I would be very interested in seeing someone try something like that, with of course sufficient fallback systems in places to make sure that no one gets hurt if things don't work out.
So how did past H&G groups live out? Did they eek out at the edge of death at all times? I think Shrimp talks about this a bit in the video, but in general it's misconception. Based on what we know about the capacity to exploit resources, the average person in a H&G group would not have had to feel hungry for the majority of their time; in fact, based on the skeletal evidence we have, early agriculturalists were far more likely to experience malnutrition than contemporary H&G groups (makes sense when you think about it, especially early on agriculture would have been very focused on a few species and thus the diet would have been far less varied). The major advantages of agriculture come from the capacity to create a larger amount of sheer calories from a smaller area than would be required for hunting and gathering, and the fact that a well organized agricultural community is able to be sedentary (i.e. live in the same spot for most of the time). This in the long term allows for far greater populations than hunting and gathering. Agriculture is also, again when well organized, far more resilient strategy for food procurement than hunting and gathering. As said, the average hunter gatherer would have been not very likely to go hungry on most days, but they were far more susceptible to unanticipated changed in the environment. If a staple resource is for some reason inaccesible, the community would have to scramble to shift resource focuses and sometimes the entire community in order to ensure survival. The mobility inherent in the lifestyle of most hunter gatherers would mean that long term food storage, the method used by agriculturalists to protect against these issues, would have been difficult; if you're not in the same spot for the whole year, it becomes very difficult to make sure that competing species or groups of humans won't just eat up your stores.
There are, of course, caveats and further thigns to consider with almost everything I've mentioned above, haha. For instance H&G groups that were sedentary have existed, such as the Jomon people of Japan. Human groups are incredibly varied and as such have come up with a ton of ways to survive and live, and oftentimes thrive. What I'm trying to say here is that H&G groups were probably a lot more "human" and a lot less "primitive" than what you might automatically think; and any group in the past would have had lots of time for the development of culture through stories and games of various kinds.
Wonderful and informative comment, thank you!
I would love to try and create an H&G group and try to survive off the land for a time. I wouldn't mind setting up a few gardens too in order to supplement that which we harvested from the land. Perhaps one day I'll create a website to try and bring other interested people together to start such a project. Departing from normative society, perhaps permanently, might be a good idea anyway given how things are going.
That was absolutely fantastic and insightful.
i havent read through your full post yet but the paragraph i did read was super interesting! Made me think of my own questions too.
when you brought up how you hated our ancestors being called primitive as a way to say they're dumb i had an idea,
Would you say the knowledge of the land wr needed to survive was heavy? 😂 now i know that doesnt sound correct but i cant help but see a connection.
Today the average person knows way more about the world than our ancestors, but our knowledge is light, surface level, basic.
But their knowledge while not wide was certainly now shallow
@@Zogerpogger There's actually already a bunch of those. Super popular in Portland, I'd see people camping and foraging all over the place.
@@BlooCollaGal Guess I'm moving to Oregon haha
I ran away in 1981 when I was 15 and stayed out in the woods for 2 weeks. Made a lean-to, fished, ate lentils and berries and a few eggs I found. I took a hatchet, a Zippo lighter, and an AM radio.
Of course I was a Boy Scout for 4 years and grew up on a farm so I kinda had that going for me.
Dang that’s wild !
Lentils?
About sloes, when I was a child I learned an old German proverb "Frost muss erst die Schlehen beißen dass sie endlich, endlich reifen". It roughly translates to "frost has to bite the sloes before they finally ripen". Once sloes become a bit wrinkly and suffered through the first frost of the year, the fruits become actually decently sweet and they stay on the brush for ages.
It’s U.K. folklore too - if you’re collecting sloes for sloe gin you’re supposed to wait until after they’ve had a good hard frosting. The last batch I made the autumn/winter was so mild that mine hadn’t been frosted at all, but the gin was good!
Similar to medlars
I've learned the same from my mother here in Sweden. We used to pick them in late autumn, after the first frost, and make sloe berry syrup. Really delicious, like a more rich almost grapey cherry flavor.
The thorns were a pain though. Really prickly bushes
same as the persimmons (Diospyros virginiana) in the American south.
Have alot of sloes in areas around me and can confirm they get noticably sweeter after a frost night. My grandma made sloe juice or what you called it English but it wasnt possible to do it in normal way and took several steps and longer time than like using sweeter berries with more flesh. That made a wonderful refreshing beverage which still had a interesting bitter/tart touch.
What you said at 19:00 reminds me of something my grandma said about preserving food:
We eat what we can, we freeze what we can, and what we can't, we can.
Living near the sea and knowing what's edible, I have no doubt I could find enough calories to easily survive if necessary. The giant problem with this however is what do you do when a couple million other people are also looking for anything edible? In that case the land will quickly be picked clean.
living near the sea or in the tropics is almost like cheating lol
and that's why we farm
Living in a place in the tropics I can tell you it probably wouldn’t work well here. There’s a lot of food but too many snakes.
@@zaseder solution: eat the snakes
@@piklan89 yummy!
I really appreciate your respect for everything, you don’t needlessly pick everything you touch. I don’t like watching other foragers and they pick the plant they’re talking about, show it to the camera and throw it back to the floor. Whereas you lower your camera to the plant without disturbing it unless you plan on eating it 💜
Great vid. One thought that comes to mind, wild plants as a whole have low caloric values, and foraging takes physical effort just to find and collect said plants... So the old "calories used / calories gained" ratio becomes really difficult.
Sure, you can make nettle soups and dandelion-green soups a staple daily food, but it won't be enough for survival alone.
Yeah, I’ve heard that! I believe nuts and berries are good
@@GIBBO4182 meat?
I have a plan to selectivity breed some of these plants into versions that have higher calorie density and grow faster.
@@grognakthedestroyerattorne3211 Meat generally isn't something you can get by foraging. Rotting carcasses are dangerous to eat and other carnivores and omnivores tend not to leave much behind if they find it. Nuts and berries are much higher in caloric value than most plants you'll find while foraging because of the fat (nuts) and sugars (berries) in them.
@@grognakthedestroyerattorne3211 I think you need a license for hunting
i remember reading how native american tribes semi-cultivated forests they foraged in by helping along plants they depended on for food, so i imagine that foraging in a certain place for a while and managing your territory would certainly help with the harvests
every "primitive" tribe in history knew more about sustainability then environment scientists nowadays damnit. Was reading book about Hunns recently, and they went to war with each other just because the territory wasn't enough to feed the whole people. Kind of brutal but honestly I would take that over a ecological disaster that poor countries are suffering through.
Well that’s just slightly less involved farming
That's how we made the amazon
They knew how to make fertilizer
also things like rice (not technically rice, I think? but a similar plant.) they had harvesting traditions that left a lot of the rice falling back into the water, providing next year's growth without having to actually plant anything.
As a kid, i used to love reading survival books and foraging for food in the forest or jungle, my absolute favourite was the breadfruit tree, imagine that, bread growing on a tree. Then I went into the army and we had jungle survival training and foraging for food is one of the training topics. And reality hit hard, I quickly came to realise that I would starve to death in a lush jungle environment, it's nothing like what is written in the books. But still had loads of fun trying not to die from hunger.
One thing that I think is interesting about foraging is that we tend to think of it as a hallmark of hunter gatherer societies but actually it remained extremely important well into the medieval era. Medieval peasants would forage not so much for calories but for ingredients to add to their food, that's how despite almost entirely living off cereal crops they could actually cook up some decently interesting meals that had seasonal variety. And that is oddly similar to what you're doing in this video.
Foraging was (and is where HGs still survive) only small part of the diet: hunting (incl. fishing) is the greatest contributor by far to an HG diet.
My parents grew up picking chanterelles in the forest every year, all kinds of berries too. It was the only way they could ever afford to eat those, as part of a poor family in rural post-ww2 germany.
@@LuisAldamiz
Source? Vast majority of research I've seen found that hunter gatherer societies mostly subside on plants
@@traditionalfolkmusic9709 - That's NOT at all reality, sorry.
@@LuisAldamiz bit unrelated, but it’s a bit disappointing how the hunter gatherer diet has been incorporated into the mainstream and, in the process, heavily falsified and embellished to fit a brand image. Recently I read about how starch was a greater component of hunter gathering diets than the modern “paleo diet” gives credit to. Popular history is almost never correct.
Living on the coast, with good quality sea water, and strong tides, (north Anglesey) it would be hard to starve here, there's an abundance of shell fish, fish fish, lobsters and crabs (at extreme low tides) not to mention edible seaweeds (pleasent varieties) and coastal plants such as samphire.
oh yeah? where's your seafood foraging video?
@@iHawke I just watch "the Fish Locker" on TH-cam. After all if everybody just made videos there'd be no one left to watch them!!
But I'm sure you'll respond with a link to your comprehensive playlists?!!
🤣
@@iHawke was thinking of beans on toast for lunch tomorrow... Maybe it'll taste better if I video it??
what if thousands of people were doing it though? e.g. after a disaster event. do you reckon there would be enough?
@@valentinaroldan7764 depends on the 4g / 5g signal... If it's still working! Or the entire internet for that matter!!
Maybe everyone should own an actual radio for future Comms??
Who knows!
Man, i love seeing you foraging and cooking. You could just record your everyday walks or everyday cooking while talking about whatever and i would still watch it! Keep doing a great job!
Me too ❤
me2
His character is important to I wouldn’t watch hours of “The northwest forager” or “outdoor chef life”
Count me in Mr Shrimp is my relaxing area with a bunch to learn
Same here but I was wondering if Mr. Shrimp while quite courteous, intelligent, thoughtful, insightful, and with the ability to cook might say that fava beans might go well together with say liver or whatever was available. Not to be rude of course. Just an interesting choice of ingredients.
Lovely video, as always! As a child in the 1960s, we used to pick clover heads and suck them for the sugar. My mother made rose-petal wine, but she used her own roses, not briers. And she didn't use any pesticide on them, she used teabags on the ground for the slugs and a diluted nicotine spray for the aphids.
How does nicotine spray compare to garlic spray?
@@lolnamelollastname9788 its addictive XD
also in line with foraging being a group effort, the whole of the wooded and wild area would likely be "cultivated" or "tended" to allow for the encouragement of both edible food growth as well as lumber collection. it doesn't take much to encourage those blueberries to spread and grow along with all of the other edible plants
I've often thought about this not just from a foraging perspective, but also a farming one.
If you were to try and grow/cultivate/raise sufficient crops/animals to feed say an average 2 adult, 2 children family, how much land, and what kind of time requirement would that take.
I would imagine it takes a lot more land, and a lot more time than people really realise.
From reading John Seymour, I think it would take about four or five acres minimum, maybe less if you were vegetarian, and a substantial time commitment varying across the year (all hands on deck at harvest, not a lot to do in the dead of winter).
Isn't that what crofting is supposed to be? Of course in reality no crofter is totally independent. Even if you could avoid having your kids born in hospital and home-schooling them, you'd need some outside 'help' to build your house and supply you with tools. And in years of poor harvest you'd need some money - or at least something to barter - to survive and feed your family.
All of which makes it so incredible that Neolithic man not only survived, but thrived and progressed into farming with better technology, co-operating and living with other early humans, creating shared languages and culture. Although, as Mr Shrimp suggests, many didn't make it along the way.
you can find so many channels on TH-cam dedicated to homesteading where you can see people commit to idea tovarying degrees. with permaculture principles and the clever use of animals (to eat pests, inedible parts of plants harvested and turning over ground), a family can sustain themselves on a fairly small plot of land.
@@brotomann I’m kind of hesitant to believe videos and channels like that, I think they are closer to reality tv than they are a realistic depiction of someone living completely off of their own plants and animals that they have grown
@@Thesnugglebottom
I have to say that here in Missour there are a number of people i know that live "off the grid" and hunt and grow 90% of their food. They still buy salt, coffee, sugar, flour and stuff like that though.
The joy in the final meal is fantastic! So affirming :)
I often look at the hedgerows and banks as I'm walking my dog and think "how much food could I forage if I had to live out here" and the answer is "not much" unless it's blackberry season when there's a glut of something at least... so I'm going to be useless in the zombie apocalypse
If it's not just for one day you will have stores and preserved food that will stretch that harvest over a longer time. So doing it as a one day challenge would be really tricky
Re: the blackberries.... It always surprised me how little seems to be eaten by wildlife or people..... (talking about the large Himalayan blackberries, although an "alien species", are important food source for various pollinators...... IMHO. ✌️👃🥰🇨🇦
@@galeparker1067 Oh, if I could have back the time I've spent keeping Himalayan blackberries from swallowing my entire two story house in Oakland, California a number of times!! The fruit is almost unbelievably sweet, juicy, and flavorful, but I hope everyone is careful to not plant them. They grow 18" per day in every which direction, and have masses of large thorns. It takes them very little time to cover a sizable property if you aren't paying enough attention. They are the sweet delicious pie-baking bits of Heaven from my childhood, though.😊
@@silva7493 I agree they are very aggressive, and I don't find them that tasty raw. The little native ones are much tastier. Himalayans are really good at creating a barrier to prevent snooping without saying "there's something to see over here, but it's not allowed to look....." 🤔😀 Discourages trespassers. Creates habitate safety 4 small critters. ✌️👃🥰🇨🇦
@@galeparker1067 Here in Italy it is quite common for Prunus Ceraisfera Pissardii to be planted as ornamental plants along roads and parking lots for their striking deep purple coloration. They make cherry-like fruits, sometimes in great abundance.
Almost no one picks them and it drives me insane. It's literally RIGHT THERE, it's free and delicious, and no one picks them.
Then they go to the store and spend 5€/kg for worse cherries.
@@silva7493 18" a day! That's mental
Here in Finland you can easily survive from early spring to late autumn, what helps is the abundance of edible things in the forests, and the ”everyman’s rights” in the law allowing you to forage and fish for free on other people’s land. But food preservation is a must since it’s pretty hard to find enough in wintertime
It's not easy at all, people who say that haven't actually tried. I'd love to see a video of you doing it for a week or two, recording your weight before and after the experiment. A TH-camr (The Wooded Beardsman) did that exact experiment in Ontario Canada during an abundant time of year and went very hungry. There's a lot that goes into hunting and gathering than just going out and getting food, it's not a supermarket.
@@jacobward7507 I literally live in the woods and there are so many things to eat, even at the moment when it’s not the richest time of the year. It would probably take me half an hour to fish a perch from my river, pick some mushrooms from my forest and gather some dandelion leaves, spruce tips, nettles and wood sorrel to make a salad, the thing is I don’t have to look for things to eat since I already know where they are, I just need to pick them. It’s a whole other thing if you are dropped into the wilderness somewhere and you don’t know your surroundings.
@@aceaudiohq again you are just saying that, anyone can say that. Do it and record it, I would watch it because I’m very interested in the topic. There are very few who have actually attempted it abs recorded their findings other than a meal or two. Living off off the wild for 2-3 meals per day for even a couple weeks is extremely difficult if not impossible in most locations.
@@aceaudiohq I second what Jacob is saying, genuinely and enthusiastically. I also would really like to see that. I'm not suggesting that I don't believe you and I mean no offense, but it sure would be great to see what you say. Any chance you would make some videos?
That sounds really lovely and I'm sure it's much easier there! Here in England (where Shrimp is) there is no 'right to roam' or free use of land; much of our countryside is privately owned, and there are laws in place to prevent us from digging up land we can walk on (as mentioned). England also scores very low globally in regard to biodiversity and wildlife (we have very little). It's one of the main reasons I'd love to leave here, there is very little wild space at all and you aren't allowed to camp anywhere etc.
I love watching you explain all the time about all the different plants you have in your area, but it breaks my heart to know that these wild fields are going to be built upon. Sometimes I think big companies just don't care about our nature dwindling away, we're losing enough as it is.
Exactly! Collaboration and helping eachother made us survive, not exactly just because we knew what plants to eat :)
It's a whole new and wonderful experience, foraging. Half of the fun is in the walk, knowing, identifying and becoming familiar in one's surroundings! I like to add something from my extended garden every day, if possible... Thank you for what you do 🌼 🤗 Sending love from Manchester 🌼
Was that Angelica that you walked past at one point? If so, I've heard that is not only edible but medicinal!
Edit: It turns out that it was Hemlock, proving I would have poisoned myself within a day foraging in the UK :P
Most likely Hogweed, Cow Parsley or Hemlock Water-Dropwort.
If it was angelica, you'd be right. Several types of angelica, especially the root are used in chinese medicine and soups.
At least you could go out like socrates!
Once again may I praise your wonderful clickbait-avoider? Just one of *many* reasons I love this channel.
You're one of the most interesting people I've come across. You've learned a lot about a lot of things, it's very impressive.
If I lived in the UK and didn't have an acre for compost and potatoes (thus allowing chickens through winter as well), my strategy would definitely be to keep Rabbits. Like silent miniature sheep they are, and all that low calorie greenery you passed is suddenly a treasure.
Think the issue there is that rabbit is an extremely lean meat, having no fat and only protein for calories, it can end up poisoning you in the long term.
@@tamosift1048 there's plenty of fatty tissue on a rabbit, but it's in the organs and the brain. You can have a high rabbit diet as long as you eat the liver, kidney and brain.
@@MartinPHellwig that is extremely gross and upsetting
@@TrifectShow how is eating meat highly upsetting?
@@dylanbutler4919 the brain and guts part
I ate wild food for about a year back in the 80's when I lived on a boat. I was only able to supplement my diet. After eating "normal food" wild food is pretty bland, I remember using bottles of salad cream. It's also bloody hard work, try digging wild roots up, it's knackering and for little profit. One plant stands out though - fat hen or orache. With poached rabbit or pheasant, a few "liberated spuds it makes great soup/broth.
Looks delicious to me, your foraging videos are my favorites. I'm 70 years old and have enjoyed wild edibles my entire life. Keep up the great work.
One of the things that I learned foraging our mountain growing up was this: Although there may be sufficient natural resources to enable a small group to forage, hunt, and fish for their sustenance in a natural wilderness, nature does not plant everything to the liking or convenience of humans. It took a lot of running about to get everything together, and as you observed, it does not all come in at convenient times, either.
This has led me to the conclusion that perhaps several of those civilizations that we have assumed to be hunter/gatherers might have been horticultural people, at least in their beginnings.
There are NOT and have never been any hunter gatherer civilizations. That sort of life does not support large enough populations for the specialization necessary to form a civilization. They all grew crops of some sort. Most kept animals. For example, the Native Americans in civilizations all grew corn, beans, and squash in addition to some other foods like potatoes, tomatoes, Quinoa, etc.
I would love to see this as a dedicated series/segment/challenge where once a month you attempt to forage a meal with the seasonal plants that are available. I think from an understanding point of knowing what is edible, knowing how to make something taste good is where the real challenge lies and I think thats what makes whatching your channel quite the inspiration for many who visit your channel and enjoy these types of videos. Thanks for the randomness of your channel its always a pleasure to see what you will post next.
To really have a shot at any kind of sustainable foraging, you need an area that has always been, or at least for many decades, wild and untouched. Here in Colorado and Montana there are areas that have never been developed by humans, and the variety of edibles is staggering. Frogs, rabbits, squirrels, crawfish, can all be easily added when available as great protein sources.
Also making findings storable. Even while foraging if you can't store or save it you run the risk of not eating for a couple of days. Grains and things you can make flower out of are essential substances to carry for flatbreads. Dry them out and grind them up. Make snares and catch a rabbit or two
CO native - right along the foothills i might be able to find enough edible material to survive, but the eastern third of the state is almost entirely prairie that doesn't have too many things to eat before you'd die of exhaustion from wandering
I'm glad I waited before leaving a comment because you answered every question I had at later points in the video. Sometimes I leave a comment as it pops into my head and look silly when it ends up answered in the video
The meal you created looked fantastic. Yes, I’m sure foraging is a challenge and you have to know what you’re doing to be confident in what you’re eating.
I'm from south of Lake Erie in the United States and I find it fascinating that a huge amount of the plants shown in this video are actually around here!
Funny thing is, I remember my mom actually showing me that these Sheperd's Purse "Leaves" are actually edible when I was a kid... And now I learn, they aren't the leaves. They are the FRUIT of that plant?!
Mind blown honestly.
Hey on the Sloe, in Germany, it is fairly well known that you wait untill the first frosty night, and then you can pick it, and the bitterness will be mostly gone. My family uses these for a liqour, "Schlehenfeuer" in german Schlehe meaning sloe and feuer meaning fire.
Ah! So similar to persimmons! Very interesting.
Or you pick em and then put em in the freezer that too works
@@lunaschibor5 Funny story, I once did some research on that and someone had beef with wikipedia a couple years ago, because on their german entry they said that putting them in the freezer doesnt work, and he got really worked up about it in a forum and wrote something like "every child with a freezer and a sloe can try it at home, it's a mistery to me that the wikipedia moderators are so out of touch"
Used to grab a little salad on my walk to work. There was always a patch of alfalfa, there'd also be a mulberry tree or if those weren't ripe, blackberry not far from it. I'd grab those, some chicory flowers and whatever in season additions I could find. Of course this was all in the summer.... seasons make all the difference.
I remember years and years ago planning to go awol and just live off the land, quickly realised how difficult it was to find a suitable area with flowing water that wasn't a nature reserve or private property but also realised just how difficult it would be to forage food and that I'd have to rely largely on fish which presents further issues when you consider most places require a fishing license, it's just an all round nightmare to try and live off the land in the UK.
Blackthorn (Prunus spinosa) is super tasty. Pick them in the fall (when they have turned black, but before the first frost). Drop them into your freezer for a night and they turn sweet and super flavorful. I have used them in several ways, either pour alcohol over them and let it sit for a few months (you can just do so for a few days, but if you do it longer then the seeds will add an almond flavor). Or use them in cooking, any place where you normally use black berry or black current.
Agreed. I made delicious blackthorn-apple-jam from the ones I foraged a year ago. Tastes really a lot like plum jam (no surprise there, they're wild plums) 😊
I lived off foraging for around 3 months and it's definitely difficult and takes pretty much a full day but I knew where and when things grew as I've foraged for a long time and I think if I'd done it any other time of year I would have struggled a lot more
One of the absolute best channels around.
i love that u live fairly local to me so i recognise most of the places u visit in your videos!
In early spring I often forage for Cardamine pratensis, the cuckoo flower, lady's smock, mayflower, or milkmaids (in German: Wiesenschaumkraut). They have small purple flowers and taste a bit spicy and sweet. They flower in march-april in relatively wet meadows.
Or sorrel, I like the distinctive sour taste. Just make sure you don't eat too much because it contains a lot of oxalic acid. It also contains a lot of vitamin C. I like to chew on the stem when I'm bored or a bit hungry. I then spit out the chewed stuff.
About the Ribwort Plantain at 28:06
I use the crushed up leaves when I have a mosquito bite. It helps soothe the itching. You can use the juice to soothe most insect stings or the ones from the stinging nettle.
Yarrow is a good plant to remember for bites and scratches; antiseptic, mildly analgesic and also styptic
Sorrel is a wonderful green to use in soups. A bit of chicken, sorrel, carrot and egg-noodles goes well.
Living in the netherlands i’m a little surprised how many plants i recognized. You’d think a whole sea apart you’d see different flowers, apparently not.
Same feeling here from Switzerland.
They've been exchanging plants, animals, and everything else you could possibly exchange for thousands of years.
Great britain , the island, was connected until quite recently in terms of geologic time so thats why most plants are the same
Britain was connected to the rest of mainland Europe around 12,000 years ago.
So weird because in the US, so many plants are the same- I truly think that’s just because the British came here- uh, not in the normal way, but you know…I don’t wanna say “colonized” because that was the entire thing with America lol but yeah
Oh and my whole point was I figured you’d have more in Common across Europe- like to us, the UK and every European continental country is still “Europe” idk 🤷🏼♀️ but yeah all these plants seem similar to meadows and roadsides here which is weird, when I figured there would be similar plants even to Sweden and shit, I mean the British plants being shared with the rest of Europe makes sense to me (with my limited American understanding of that, lol)
From Quebec, Canada. I just had a feed of fiddleheads. They`re delicious. Love your videos.
Here in the midwest, (something to note, I live in a small town with lots of surrounding forest) I can walk outside and forage a varied meal almost any time of the year. I can't think of a timeframe except winter where there are no fresh berries, fruit, buds, flowers, etc all over the place.
Yes, but can you get the calories and protein to survive, not just season things and give you vitamins? I think you'd have to hunt (admittedly usually easier in the US than Britain, though some urban totalitarians are working on that) or fish for protein and some calories, and unless you have good nut (or at least oak, with lots of water to detoxify the acorns) population locally, you'll probably need to farm a bit for starch and/or oils. Farming or hunting fatty meats like waterfowl (or domestic cattle) would also help. Rabbits, rodents, upland gamebirds, and often even venison unless you learn where the fatty organ meats are (& how to enjoy eating them) will give you "rabbit starvation" if not supplemented by calories from fat &/or starch. Burning protein for calories is seldom wise.
We have a crap ton of native edible root plants that can provide the starch (we even have invasive salsify, which I haven't tried yet, but am curious about.) & have two species of wild bean. The problem is finding & identifying them. Both species of bean are virtually endangered just about everywhere &, though seed is available, they're damned near impossible to get growing because every goddamned thing on the face of the earth highly favors some one part or another &, since it's wild, you can't even bury the seeds.
@@erikjohnson9223 Yes, I can. we have a LOT of nuts here, and a decent variety of mushrooms. At least once a year I do a week long outing where all I eat is foraged and sometimes hunted food. Oh, and where I live there are a ton of fruit trees in the wild. I loved running through the woods eating pawpaw and apples when I was younger. Additionally with hunting, the animal populations, especially with deer, will get out of control and cause disasters if they aren't hunted, so there is plenty of game both small and big. I know my area is a lot more rich than most of the surrounding ones, but even in the more dreary swathes of land one could fill up their belly.
@@kelvaxmiller8963 Same, rural midwesterner. The sheer natural abundance I'm surrounded by is awe inspiring. My daily struggle would not be getting enough food to survive, it would be deciding what to pair it with.
@@erikjohnson9223 Venison is very nutrient dense, and while deer fat is not the best tasting there's plenty of it on their backs and bellies - especially in Autumn.
Love the videos and captivated the whole way through. Wouldn't have the confidence to attempt wild foraging but enjoy watching you do it. Keep them coming please :)
When you mentioned about the tropical plant smell, reminded me when I was 15 I touched a tropical plant and come out with itchy blisters all over my body. They then found out I am sensitive to tropical type plants just before I went to Cuba so I had to watch out for certain plants when I was there. Great video I love these informative videos. 👍
The UK is a great place to forage I do it almost every day, like you say very seasonable. The key for me is to collect and store for winter months or when certain plants are not around.
I still have loads of Hazelnuts from last year to last me until late August this year when I will collect again. I have also done some gorilla gardening with plants and trees.
And we are so lucky to have so many stinging nettles and sea beets .
I was told also by an Indigenous friend that red clover leaves are also edible. They can be added to salads or just eaten on the go and provide a small amount of protein.
IDK if it was red clover, but we'd always suck the sweet sap out of clover flowers when I was a kid.
After years of mowing the lawn every 2 weeks, I now leave it to grow for 3 months so it's as wild as permissible. Dandelions are left to flower for the bees but I do put the seed heads in the food bin, we get daisy and clover and grass that seeds itself.
I worry that all the area used by golf courses (especially around us) is a travesty to nature and the enjoyment of a few.
What does “wild as permissible” mean where you are, and what are the constraints?
I agree about the golf courses - reservations for a particular set of humans. Although I note that there was a sudden proliferation of new courses 20-30 years ago (in U.K.), many of which failed.
@@chriswalford4161 Permissable by me and nothing to do with the government/council. ie I'm now ok with dandelions but don't want them invading the place so bin the seeds on most that flower. As for golf courses, they are large open spaces on what is often good arable land and with the food shortage at the moment and just the fact we should be growing more ourselves seems to be a resource that is being badly misused.
I keep my lawn tidy but I relocate and plant wolf flower sim my flower bed. I have oxalis, borage, rose, elderflower, hawthorn, dandelion, nettles, ramsons, herb Robert, clover and garlic mustard
@@mrfoameruk Golf courses also use obscene amounts of water. They're a waste all around.
Living off foraging is super hard, very much an inconvenience!
Love it, i like going around snacking, in a survival situation i would probably go for the roots.. but man it would not go over well. I live in Sweden so i would starve pretty fast if i couldn't get some meat!
These are almost my favorite videos you do. Certainly learning a TON about different plants. So thanks for that!
...but if we extend the definition of land to include private business and store, and foraging to include permanently depriving another of their property, then you could live succesfully, until you dont. So yes, difficult in all ways.
Not really if you are depriving someone of their property eventually you will have a free bed and 3 meals all paid for by the crown. 😆 you may not like shower and sleep times if someone takes a liking to you.
@@allanfulton7569 or a pine box
@@oz_jones lol yeah or a pine box but I'm Canadian and unless we are trying to deprive criminals of their property we are generally ok except the free room and board part.
"Hmm, buttercup. That sounds good."
"Nah, buttercup is toxic. Let's get some Goat's-Beard instead."
There's like a whole lot of wild carrots all around where I live. But they can easily be mistaken for poison hemlock by people who can't tell the difference. So yeah. Also. You need like 20 for a decent meal. Wild parsnips also grow. But their leaves causes serious burns.
Interesting what you made! I can't imagine how elderflowers would taste in a savoury patty, I tasted them a week ago in crepe batter and they taste, wel. like they smell. Reminds me of a herb with how potent the taste-smell combo was.
Thank you for sharing, great video! There is a very good reason we made the switch to intensive farming. Foraging is difficult if it is your only method of eating. It also does not support high density population.
Living in the rural middle east and again eating by seasonal variations brought back the joy of the arrival of the new foods which I had forgotten from my youth.
I love your foraging stuff, just so much. And I love how varied your videos are so everyone can find something to enjoy🥰
Thinking about foraging, I used to live next to the Pacific Ocean. Close enough that I had wanted to try to make Japanese style sea salt. Unfortunately I moved and now only see mountains. You inspired me to try that. Found a food item I felt comfortable with and a use for it (large Crystal salt for grilling), however I just did not make enough time before I had to move. Thank you for seeing that spark. Now I just need to find the equivalent item to be excited about in my new home!
Personally i find berries and fruit to be the easiest foregeables to tell apart from their lookalikes. So maybe look into picking some type of wild berry
Goat's Beard flower buds are one of my favorite wild foods. They are good raw or cooked, and they also make wonderful pickles.
I must try that. Do you pick the ones that only just flowered, or before they open?
With as insightful and knowledgeable as Atomic Shrimp is, I think this man's lived a few lifetimes already.
Never thought I'd be interested in this but here I am. These are fascinating.
I especially like these foraging vids of yours!
My knowledge of plants is quite limited, and I've mostly gathered just ground elder and stinging nettles, plus young shoots of Chamaenerion angustifolium. Last fall I tried chickweed for the first time, inspired by your video.
When it comes to fungi, I've gathered a relatively decent amount of knowledge. Hopefully you'll post more fungus-related vids this season! Maybe more foraging trips and some some novel recipes?
I suspect the bottle of vegetable oil would’ve been the most shocking kitchen addition to a pre-agricultural person.
Seeing everything being built on makes me so sad as well. I guess that’s progress in todays society. We are lucky to live on a lot of land but even so we like to roam widely and forage and enjoy nature and the animals that live there. Love your videos so much, feels nice to know there are others with similar interests out there!
@Por Qué? it’s a difficult issue that’s for sure. I’m a Brit who lives in Australia so I can hardly point fingers re: immigration. But we certainly need to think of ways to house people that don’t destroy the natural space around us.
Fantastic tutorial! Your narrative style really brings home the point that many hands help make the meal. I learned several new facts here today. Thank you!
New York City native here I'm homeless and yes although it's really hard to collect enough for three meals you can do enough for one meal a day even in an urban environment if you look around. I get one of my two salad basis, Linden Leaves from a graveyard. Branches hang over the wall but I know that soil is good. (There are no graves in that section)
I heard they literally plant lettuce and cabbage as decoration in NY
@@jojijojo3566 They do actual. And thats literally all they do and they only plant in places where dogs piss. Unfortunately lol. Although ironically enough wild Lettuce grows native. It requires cooking and to not over consume older plants. And Violet is my favorite base and tastes just like cultivated.
@@ontoya1 if you're going to be homeless, what i never understood is why not be homeless in a rural area bountiful with flora? why be homeless in a polluted city? is it because the local government don't pay you any mind??
@@Retrofire-47 Few people choose to be Homeless. For those who have great have been homeless for years and they physically and socially cannot get out at all I say the same thing. But as for me and my circumstance I do have a chance. I self study consistently every day. Have a good head on my shoulders I'm not a druggie and I'm joining the national guard pretty soon. And even when you're homeless you still have stuff. Imagine manually moving stuff across multiple dozens if not 100s of miles with no help just to get to some place in the woods. Also imagine if you are addicted to a substance, you cant get that without your connects In city. Also most people, even perfect normal people do not have the naturalistic and/or scientific knowhow to distill those drugs from the plants they come from.
Elderflowers can be used to make tea or wine and elderberries can be used to make jam or wine.
I'm baffled that i have been watching foraging videos for years and have only come across your channel recently.
Your videos are amazing and boy would i love to have as my sensei in real life. You seem so pleasant, curious and clever!
Big admirations from Denmark!
Well, dang, if that wasn't just the most fascinating video! Thank you for showcasing your knowledge & wonderful woodland walks.
Yay starting the weekend off right with a new Shrimp vid, thanks Mike interesting as always
Here in the U.S, whenever the soil is moved for construction like pipelines, road work, etc seeds are planted.
They spray seeds on the disturbed soil, put burlap cloth on the soil and wet it down. They also build drainage diches and put bundles of hay to slow down water from rain runoff.
It works great and I have yet to ever meet or hear of anyone who does not like or support the process.
Brilliant!
I learned alot just with this video, you made me realize there's so many edable plants behind my house, thank you for sharing your knowledge
First 2 minutes and I'm already entertained and learned something new. I don't know how you do it, honestly.
Basically foraging seems to fall into the category of things that I class as "free for a reason."
If it was simple to do and people could live off it, some bugger would have found a way to monetize it.
Foraging apples, lemons and peaches from my backyard/neighbors place is EASY... Have to be willing to cut out a worm, maybe, but not difficult.
@@growtocycle6992
That’s not foraging, that’s harvesting an orchard.
@@ragnkja A tree in the backyard is not an orchard...
@@growtocycle6992
No, but a group of trees is.
I once had a discussion with a acheology professor at uni (ancient studies (mainly greek culture)) about the northern europe versus the southern europe, like greece and italy. He claimed that the southern part were much more sophisticated due to being more intelligent. I pointed out that he wasnt taking the climate into consideration. In the south, its warmer and the summer/warm season lastet much longer and the winters were milder versus the colder climate in the north, making the survival harsher. The northern areas had to use much more energy and time to just survive, meaning there werent the same time to develope paper, written language, writing stories down. So in fact the north were more inginious cos of the things they actually developed with the little time that they had aside from survival.
He sat for a bit pondering then nodded and agreed that was a very good point.
"So in fact the north were more inginious cos of the things they actually developed" is not a fair conclusion to jump to, but the premise is fine.
If your professor argued that one group was inherently more intellegent than another he was a fool
@@conorkelly947 Be fair now, "wow these people were idiots" might actually be his Professional Opinion
Lmao
@@conorkelly947 he wasnt but he was very very fond of greek and roman culture. Sometimes the professors just get a bit of a tunnelvision. He was an expert in ancient post holes, one of the sweetest professors we had and with a great sense of humor.
@@BlooCollaGal I know, I was teasing/pushing my professor a bit, it was all said with a glint in the eyes.
These videos are so lovely - I put them on in the background as some calming company and also catch interesting foraging bits as I work on other stuff. I'm in the Pacific temporate rainforest so the plants are very different, but it's nice to see you walking about and pointing out edible things!
Thanks for an enjoyable, informative film. On the sloes - they lose much of their astringency, following the first frost, so a modern option is to freeze them.
I am going to intentionally hunt/look for stinging nettles, I remember when I was young and there was a drought and people in Kenya were eating this. We don’t foliage for food and relies on normal food that come from farm ( potatoes, etc) but I have now discovered that nature has so much we could use for food. I come from a farming community and I have appreciated learning from this programs.
Careful with following these videos if you're in Kenya, I assume a lot of the advice and warnings are specific to north-western Europe.
Look in a library or online to see if there's any books or videos on nature in where Kenya is located (Central Africa if I'm correct)
The foraging advice for Britain won’t always be good in Kenya, so get your advice from Kenyan sources, especially when it comes to potential toxic lookalikes.
Love your content atomic!!!!!
I really enjoyed this video! I like how down-to-earth this was, and I'll definitely be trying nettle fritters sooner or later.
That was a captivating video from start to finish. Thank you for your work!
If you've got an entire field of clover it's a sign of a fairly significant nitrate deficiency
thank you for commenting this, a new thing I learned today :)
Not for long I'd imagine
@@reogrande8020 No, the clover will strip nitrogen from the air and store the excess in the roots and this will be released back into the soil when the plant dies. All part of the cycle, the clover is simply exploiting an environment where other species struggle but eventually it will become habitable for other species and they will outcompete the clover until the cycle starts again.
Honestly where I'm at in Texas I'd likely starve. Outside of cactus fruit and what's in people's yards the drought has made foraging a non starter. You know your in trouble when even the wildlife looks gaunt.
Same here in southern nm, there's not much of a foraging community around here because there are only a few plants that are abundant in the dry heat.
You can also burn the thorns and glochids of prickly pear pads (=nopales, a vegetable like a mix of okra and green beans), but that isn't going to cut it from a calorie or protein standpoint. There are Texas/Southwest survivalist/foraging channels on TH-cam that are fun to watch, but while it's useful and important to learn the local wild flora (not at all the same as in Britain or the eastern USA, especially in drought years), you definitely need to hunt or raise animals to survive. At least mesquite is an obvious starch source (if you know when to harvest to avoid aflatoxin risks); not all parts of the country have one.
What a fascinating video, thank you for sharing
Sloe correctly prepared (only gather them after the first frost, let them ripen like medlars) tastes wonderful as a jam, juice, or in a sweetened liquour. Hunter gatherers would probably combine it with honey or other, sweeter fruits. Very healthy for digestion, or for people recovering from a severe illness). The blossoms make a delicious, marcipane smelling tea that help with diarrhea.
One thing I think ypu missed are acorns. With some work and knowledge they can be processed into edible flour and can be very plentiful. Easily one of the best food sources for the pre-agricultural people but with some limitations of its own.
Yes but that's fall product it must be boiled twice. Then you can grind as flour.
@@kylekelly1167 Many hours of washing with cold water are also sufficient.
Not at all in season, and requires processing. Therefore, acorns fall under the category of foods our ancestors would have used, but that aren't feasible for someone who needs to forage what they're going to eat the same day. Great for tiding you over the hungry gaps when there's not much to forage, though.
Loved the video! I really enjoy watching you do your food challenges and foraging.
That meal looked top class
Thank you for another great vid. I get a huge kick out of watching you forage.
I do think we have an advantage in certain parts of “the new world” when it comes to living off the land for real…but also to be fair, a lot of plants were brought over here from the UK and aren’t native- such as chamomile, I think, which you just showed! (Pretty sure a lot of herbs like that aren’t native) But I know I could live off foraged fruits, vegetables, fungi and animals & fish in Michigan but that’s the Great Lakes and not like…the desert or even landlocked Midwest states.
In the New England area, garlic mustard, which he showed, is a tenacious invasive that outgrows native underbrush. In its first weeks of growth, it can be pulled up with little efforet from the ground, roots and all. As far as I know, all of it is edible, not just the seeds and leaves. I pick it even when I have no use for it, just because the damned stuff spreads far too fast and once it really roots, it'll grow there even if you pull out 90% of the plant.
I live in rural Arkansas and most people around here forage and hunt to help with food supply. Everyone around here have a garden and there are plenty of places to get a fish hook wet.
atomic shrimp, do you sell merch? i would love to own a shirt or something relating to your youtube channel. your videos bring me so much joy and i always learn something new! very grateful to have found your channel back in 2019 and very grateful to still be here today waiting for every upload :)
I had to close down the merch store. Teespring kept telling me I did not own my own designs.
Honestly, just watching you collect plants and combine them into an odd yet delicious dish, is really entertaining! It looks really fun to do too, maybe I should learn how to forage.
Thank you for the knowledge.
Another great piece of content and some 'food' for thought. I think the progression from day to day foraging to a more planned harvested/stored approach is evident from what we know about about our ancestors. Digging up roots and tubers would have been part of that food gathering which, as mentioned, needs to adhere to current laws, etc these days. (In a post apocalyptic world they would go out of the window!) 'Road kill' will have been part of the diet and, it has to be said, cannibalism would have been on the menu! I've tasted a raw sloe - f*ck me they are sharp! - but our ancestors might have found them 'refreshing'