Four Season Foraging

⭐️I have an important announcement!⭐️ After giving it much thought, I've decided to leave Meta. I will keep my pages up so you can still browse and learn from the old content, but I won't be creating any new content or checking it anymore.

For a long time, I've had an ambivalent relationship to social media, but I thought I needed it to stay in touch with people and to run a business. But the reality is that I don't. None of us do. There are better ways to build and maintain relationships than through the mechanisms of tech billionaires. Recent events and policy changes have only highlighted that reality for me.

Does that mean I'm going to be completely off the internet? No! Does that mean I think you're a bad person if you choose to stay on these platforms? No! But I have decided that I will be better off focusing my efforts elsewhere.

You can stay connected with me through other channels, including iNaturalist, YouTube, Patreon, my blog, and by subscribing to my newsletter. You can find links in my bio, PLUS if you scroll down to the thumbnail for today's post, a link for preventing some of the ways that Meta collects and monetizes your personal information (for those of you who are staying.)

I have lots of fun things planned for this year - workshops, retreats, webinars, and more animal tracking education! I hope to see you out in the field 🌿

Thank you for your love and support, friends!

Photos by the amazing Bestside Captures.

You might have noticed that I'm talking a lot more about wildlife tracking lately! And you might be thinking to yourself, "What the heck?? This is supposed to be a foraging page - why does she keep talking about tracking?"

Well the answer is, first of all, that it's super cool and I have a lot of fun doing it and I think you would also have fun doing it! But besides that, I honestly think there are a lot of similarities between tracking and foraging, and that the two practices build on and inform each other.

For example, both practices rely on engaging your senses, becoming more familiar with your surroundings, and learning to recognize patterns. And the more you track or forage, the easier those things become, which of course further improves your tracking and foraging. The two are symbiotic.

Another great thing is that tracking and foraging are complementary - often when I head out to forage, I end up following animal tracks; and when I go out tracking, I end up picking wild edibles. Even the seasons are complementary (at least ideally, if we ever get any snow around here! 😭) When winter arrives and there is less to forage, there are tons of animal tracks to investigate on the snowy landscape.

And of course, tracking can help you eat more wild food by improving your hunting and trapping skills. Don't come at me, vegans - hunting and trapping are important ways to build food sovereignty and to create a deeper relationship with the beings that we consume to sustain our lives. Ultimately, both tracking and foraging tie us to our surrounding landscape in deep and meaningful ways.

Maybe I've convinced you to try it out?? If so, you're in luck - I still have openings in my class this Sunday! If that doesn't work for you, I have another tracking workshop coming up on February 15th at . Link to events page can be found in my bio.

Picture descriptions:
1 - folks gathering around a mystery s**t at a tracking workshop
2 - otter slides along a frozen river
3 - tracking otter slides through the forest
4 - snowshoe hare tracks in northern Minnesota

2024 was our best year yet for providing you with accessible foraging education! We held 30 outdoor workshops (most of them free or sliding scale), plus an additional 18 other events, such as webinars, speaking engagements, private tours, and retreats. We also worked with more partners than ever before, collaborating with 20 organizations and businesses to bring you new and exciting topics, and to deliver foraging workshops to farther locations—from the Twin Cities to the North Shore and all the way up to the Boundary Waters!

I'm looking forward to establishing even more new foragers and inspiring experienced ones in 2025! I feel so much happiness in witnessing others connect directly with the more-than-human world, and in fostering that connection as much as I can. That said, I also must admit that I feel a huge amount of fear and trepidation for what's to come. Amidst all the wishes for a happy new year, I can't help but think about all the dangers and challenges in the world: the rise of the far right in the US and other countries; wars and g*nocides wreaking havoc across the planet; the increasingly disastrous effects of climate change. These feelings aren't new, to be sure; but they do become more acute as time goes on, and especially following the results of the US elections in 2024.

So what is a person to do? Become apathetic in the face of overwhelming odds? Throw up your hands and pretend it has nothing to do with you? Side with the rich and powerful forces that perpetrate this harm in an attempt to curry favor? Well, I can tell you that I will continue to go outside every day, learn as much as possible about this beautiful world that surrounds us, and share that knowledge with as many people as I can.

Skills like foraging are—and always have been—vital to humanity. Though it is certainly not the solution to all our problems, it is one path I have chosen to help increase access to healthy foods, build community, and encourage meaningful relationships with the more-than-human landscape. I hope you will join me in this coming year!

Thanks to Bestside Captures for the beautiful photos!

Have you heard that I have a merch store? That's right - I sell t-shirts, stickers, buttons, hats, and other goods through TeePublic. All items are designed by a forager (me!) for other foragers (you!)

In an exciting update, TeePublic recently upgraded my account to participate in their partnership program! This means that when you purchase items from my merch store, even more of those funds go directly to supporting me in providing you with accessible foraging education. Thank you!

New link is now in bio! Be sure to check it out when you get a chance. Everything is on sale for a limited time!

Gifting experiences is a great way to ditch the clutter, create happy memories, and support local businesses! In anticipation of the biggest shopping weekend of the year, I'm announcing three big sales on foraging-related products:

✨20% off annual membership through Patreon. This is a great way to help me continue to offer the free foraging tutorials and sliding scale workshops that you enjoy! PLUS you get exclusive benefits, like access to the Four Season Foraging Discord, monthly webinars, and more! Be sure to check out Patreon's new gifting feature, in which you can purchase a gift membership for your friends and family. Use the code FORAGING-FUN at patreon.com/fourseasonforaging from Fri, Nov 29, 12am to Mon, Dec 2, 11:59pm.

🌲20% off workshops hosted by Four Season Foraging. Join me at a winter foraging or animal tracking event in January! It's a fun way to get outside, reconnect to your surrounding landscape, and learn valuable skills. Use the code FORAGING-FUN at fourseasonforaging.com/events from Fri, Nov 29, 12am to Mon, Dec 2, 11:59pm. Please note that this offer excludes partner events.

🍄Up to 40% off all merch at my TeePublic store! For those of you who prefer physical goods, check out t-shirts, hats, stickers, buttons, and other items designed for the nature enthusiast. Browse a selection of different styles for different tastes, all designed by me. Visit teepublic.com/user/fourseasonforaging from now thru Saturday to catch this deal!

❄️Finally, don't forget about gift cards! (They aren't included in the sale, but they're such a great gift idea that I had to include them here!) Gift cards can be used to pay for events or private tours hosted by Four Season Foraging, of which there will be many in 2025. Since the values never expire, there is no rush for the recipient to use them by a certain date. Find them at fourseasonforaging.com/gift-cards.

The gift of foraging is truly the gift that keeps on giving!

Exhausted in the best way possible after a magical weekend tracking elk in northern Wisconsin 💖

Though I've put lots of time into studying track and sign (who left that track? Who ate those acorns? Who deposited that s**t?) I have very little experience trailing (attempting to follow the tracks from one individual, often with the intent of finding that animal.) With its abundance of public land and herd of large ungulates (elk) Clam Lake is in many ways the perfect place to practice. So I helped organize a group of world-class trackers and amazing people to spend a long weekend honing our skills. It was a wonderful time!!

Special thanks to Kirsten Welge of for letting me use some photos (the one of the elk & the ones of me) and for being kind and patient enough to teach me proper trailing techniques! As she said, it can seem like magic to follow a trail across leaf litter, but really it's just a matter of engaging your senses and understanding what to look for. I have to say though, it did feel magical to notice what I thought was a deer track, lift an undisturbed leaf from the top of it, and find a perfect little hoof print underneath!

Trailing really reminded me more of mushroom hunting than track and sign identification. You create a search image in your mind and move quietly across the landscape, scanning the ground in front of you and keeping your eyes up so as to avoid missing clues. In both mushroom foraging and trailing, sometimes you become too wrapped up in looking around your feet to notice something obvious in front of you. It's a grounding and meditative practice, and I'm hooked!

There were many highlights of the weekend, but some of the best parts were hanging out in the lodge after a long day in the woods, sharing stories and laughing. Learning is most fun in community, and I'm lucky to have some great nature nerds as friends!

It's black walnut season! 🐿

Even though we're getting late in the year, there are still plenty of black walnuts to forage (if you know where to look!) You might know them as "those big green balls that nearly twist my ankles every dang time," but they are edible and delicious!

The taste is hard to describe, but it's nothing like an English walnut (the kind you get at the store.) While there is a definite nuttiness to the flavor, the dominant notes are botanical, almost citrusy. They taste a lot like they smell, which is to say AMAZING!

Look for tall trees with dark, deeply furrowed bark and long, pinnately compound leaves. The leaf scar on the twigs looks like a monkey face. Also look for what kind of resembles small tennis balls growing on the trees. Those are the nuts, but they are wrapped in green husks, which turn yellowish and fall as they ripen.

WARNING - those husks are a potent brown dye! To avoid staining your hands for weeks, use gloves or shoed feet. OR you can try BlackForager's "lazy girl" method (which I'm trying for the first time this year) in which you dry the nuts whole (with the husks), put them in a sturdy bag, and then slam them against the sidewalk multiple times to remove the now desiccated husks. You'll still have to extract the nutmeat from the shell - I use a hammer and a hard surface for that. While this mortar and pestle is very pretty, it's not actually strong enough to break the thick shells. Oh, and make sure to cure the nuts by drying in the shells for several weeks if you plan to store them long term.

If you find these growing in a city of Minneapolis park, you're in luck, as these are one of the items you're allowed to harvest! (Except for excluded areas - be sure to look up all the details.)

What's your favorite way to eat black walnuts? Do you have any processing tricks? I would love to hear your experience!

Can I share my love for fall just one more time? Who am I kidding - I'll probably do it ten more times! 😂

It's such a lovely season for so many reasons - the crisp weather, the fiery leaf colors, and - of course - the foraging!

From fruits to seeds to mushrooms to roots, there's lots to harvest in fall. And even though we're getting late in the year, there's still plenty out there! I just picked hawthorn fruits and honey mushrooms the other day, and recently enjoyed a lovely patch of black nightshade berries, and have been snacking on hackberries for weeks now. And there's even more besides that! Fall is also a secret season for greens, as cold-hardy plants like garlic mustard become more palatable, and perennials like sochan often put out fresh leaves.

I'm holding my final workshop of the season on Saturday in Minneapolis. The weather is going to be in the 70s and sunny, which honestly is disconcerting for this time of year, but I'm going to try to enjoy it 😅 There's still space left, so register soon if you would like to attend!

I hope to see you out in the fields and forests this fall 🍁

Did you know that Minnesota has tree species that are classified as endangered by the state? Here is one of them - the butternut (Juglans cinerea), also known as the white walnut. Once a common tree in eastern woodlands, it's now imperiled due to the butternut canker, a fungus introduced to North America in the 1960s. This fungus manifests as a black, charcoal-like crust on the bark of the tree, which you can see in the fifth pic.

Butternut is a close relative of the black walnut (Juglans nigra), but a few distinguishing features can help you tell them apart:

🌿Butternut has oval-shaped nuts with sticky hairs on the husk, whereas black walnuts are spherical and not sticky.
🌿The leaves of butternut have a terminal leaflet that's similar in size to the other leaflets; in black walnut, the terminal leaflet is absent or reduced.
🌿Leaf scars of both species resemble a monkey face, but on butternut the top edge is mostly straight and often has dense hairs. Black walnut leaf scars are notched at the tip and lack the band of hairs.

As an endangered species, it is illegal to "take, import, transport, or sell any portion," including the nuts! That means no foraging! (Note that you can legally harvest butternut in many other states, however.) The MN DNR has issued a general permit to "take, collect, transport, dispose, or possess state endangered butternut for the purpose of enhancing survival." You do not need to apply for this permit - it is a blanket permit that covers anyone who reads it and follows the conditions! Definitely look it up though, as it is very stringent (you can find it through the link in my bio.) The permit does NOT allow for:

🚫Consumption or decorative use of seeds
🚫Sale of seeds or live trees
🚫Harvesting or propagation of butternut hybrids (primarily with the Japanese walnut, Juglans ailantifolia)

Maybe with the concerted effort of foragers, naturalists, and other folks who love the outdoors, we can help this species flourish again and get it removed from the state's endangered species list!

I was lucky to attend the Midwest Wild Harvest Festival in Wisconsin this past weekend! It was a whirlwind of fun classes, tasty food, knowledgeable instructors, and great conversations. Some highlights for me included:

1. The walnut mycena mushroom - so cute!! 🥺
2. Learning from at her mushroom walk
3. 's mushroom intensive (here we are looking at a butternut with fungal blight)
4. Chicken of the woods
5. A native red mulberry!!
6. Bat s**t - my first time identifying it! 🤓

Also the food by and crew is always amazing, but I somehow managed to not take a single picture (probably because I was too busy eating it!!) The black walnut milk, fennel salad, and fermented ramp sauce were some of my favorites 😋

If you've never been to this event, I highly recommend checking it out next year (though tickets go super fast so you have to be really timely and a little lucky to get in!)

For those of you who attended - what were some of your favorite moments?