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The Forager's Harvest: A Guide to Identifying, Harvesting, and Preparing Edible Wild Plants
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-Super-Strong Sewn Binding
-368 Pages, 218 Photos, full color
-Size 6 x 9 x 0.7 inches
This classic book on edible wild plants is a favorite of naturalists and survival instructors throughout North America. It has been a perennial top seller on this subject. Rather than cover hundreds of plants in abbreviated accounts like the typical field guide, the author has chosen a smaller selection of species to discuss in exhaustive detail, including only those plants he has eaten fifty times or more. Over 100,000 copies sold!
-368 Pages, 218 Photos, full color
-Size 6 x 9 x 0.7 inches
This classic book on edible wild plants is a favorite of naturalists and survival instructors throughout North America. It has been a perennial top seller on this subject. Rather than cover hundreds of plants in abbreviated accounts like the typical field guide, the author has chosen a smaller selection of species to discuss in exhaustive detail, including only those plants he has eaten fifty times or more. Over 100,000 copies sold!
What to expect about this book?
Samuel Thayer's "The Forager's Harvest" is one of the most exhaustive foraging books you could have ever hoped for or wanted.
He does not merely just talk about the plants and show you their pictures, make up, leaves and structure to help you identify it. He actually goes into great detail about the plants, the psychology of foraging and the realistic abilities of doing so, describes what portions of the plant are actually edible, which parts are not and what environments you can find them in. He talks about when to harvest it, what stages in the plants development you might encounter at different times of the season, when it’s ripe for the picking, and when its far past its edibility.
He not only covers a huge list of plants, 31 in all, to learn about, but actually has eatenall of them numerous times as opposed to someone who is just regurgitating things about plants one could theoretically eat yet they themselves have not. They are a large part of his and his family’s personal diet.
He also goes into great detail about how they taste, how to prepare them, whether raw or cooked, or whether they can be canned and how they can be stored. In the beginning of this book he spends a lot of time talking about different ways to harvest these plants, what tools to use, and how to use them correctly.
Another important aspect that he speaks about and so needed to understand is how he debunks so many false stories, beliefs and false fears about wild edibles many people have been falsely led to believe. Especially the hype around the movie Into the Wild that struck a lot of false fear into people about how the young Christopher McCandless died. He exposes how the out-right falsehoods the movie producers put into the movie and went as far as actually altering documents.
Another one of my favorite points he covers is the false fears and beliefs about what if you incorrectly think a plant is edible when it’s actually poisonous? He points out how far from the truth this actually is! He shows you how misidentification is impossible when you know the plants correct identifying factors. He focuses on what one must absolutely learn to identify when focusing upon each of the edible plants he covers such as form, structure, leaves or flowers it produces, its growth stages etc.
For example, in the chapter which covers the edible Ostrich Fern (pg 78-81), he breaks down why some misidentify the Fiddleheads of cinnamon fern Osmunda cinnamomea and the interrupted fern Osmunda claytonia. Both have a woolly covering as opposed to the edible Ostrich Fern which does not have this. He dismantles the idea of misidentification having any real truth behind it and the fear-mongering attitude so many try to continue to perpetuate. Simply put, if you learn that a plant has a white flower, for example, and the poisonous one has a purple flower, then how would you so foolishly misidentify it? He will teach and prove to you that there is no such thing as there being identical poisonous plants to the edible plants. They are always different and you just need to learn the differences.
What I personally have appreciated about his books is how he gives you his personal journey into how he grew up exploring, learning and eating wild edibles and how he got to where he is today. This is a must for your foraging and wild edible learning!
--Avi Ben Shalom
Samuel Thayer's "The Forager's Harvest" is one of the most exhaustive foraging books you could have ever hoped for or wanted.
He does not merely just talk about the plants and show you their pictures, make up, leaves and structure to help you identify it. He actually goes into great detail about the plants, the psychology of foraging and the realistic abilities of doing so, describes what portions of the plant are actually edible, which parts are not and what environments you can find them in. He talks about when to harvest it, what stages in the plants development you might encounter at different times of the season, when it’s ripe for the picking, and when its far past its edibility.
He not only covers a huge list of plants, 31 in all, to learn about, but actually has eatenall of them numerous times as opposed to someone who is just regurgitating things about plants one could theoretically eat yet they themselves have not. They are a large part of his and his family’s personal diet.
He also goes into great detail about how they taste, how to prepare them, whether raw or cooked, or whether they can be canned and how they can be stored. In the beginning of this book he spends a lot of time talking about different ways to harvest these plants, what tools to use, and how to use them correctly.
Another important aspect that he speaks about and so needed to understand is how he debunks so many false stories, beliefs and false fears about wild edibles many people have been falsely led to believe. Especially the hype around the movie Into the Wild that struck a lot of false fear into people about how the young Christopher McCandless died. He exposes how the out-right falsehoods the movie producers put into the movie and went as far as actually altering documents.
Another one of my favorite points he covers is the false fears and beliefs about what if you incorrectly think a plant is edible when it’s actually poisonous? He points out how far from the truth this actually is! He shows you how misidentification is impossible when you know the plants correct identifying factors. He focuses on what one must absolutely learn to identify when focusing upon each of the edible plants he covers such as form, structure, leaves or flowers it produces, its growth stages etc.
For example, in the chapter which covers the edible Ostrich Fern (pg 78-81), he breaks down why some misidentify the Fiddleheads of cinnamon fern Osmunda cinnamomea and the interrupted fern Osmunda claytonia. Both have a woolly covering as opposed to the edible Ostrich Fern which does not have this. He dismantles the idea of misidentification having any real truth behind it and the fear-mongering attitude so many try to continue to perpetuate. Simply put, if you learn that a plant has a white flower, for example, and the poisonous one has a purple flower, then how would you so foolishly misidentify it? He will teach and prove to you that there is no such thing as there being identical poisonous plants to the edible plants. They are always different and you just need to learn the differences.
What I personally have appreciated about his books is how he gives you his personal journey into how he grew up exploring, learning and eating wild edibles and how he got to where he is today. This is a must for your foraging and wild edible learning!
--Avi Ben Shalom
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