Forager’s Gold: Why Now Is the Best Time to Reconnect with the Wild World Around You

Bill’s foraging class on Capital Hill

It’s finally here — the absolute best time of year to forage.

Spring is bursting with edible and medicinal wild plants, and whether you live in the middle of a forest or on a busy city block, there’s something growing near you right now that’s worth noticing. Foraging is one of the most powerful ways to reconnect — with your food, your environment, your past, your community, and your health.

And the best part? It’s wildly accessible.

You can successfully forage in rural, suburban, and urban environments alike. In fact, one of my favorite annual foraging tours takes place right through the heart of Washington, DC — sidewalks, parks, fence lines, parking lots, and all.

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The Forgotten Relationship Between Plants and People

Foraging isn’t just about finding ingredients — it’s about rebuilding a relationship with plants that modern agriculture and grocery store culture have nearly erased.

When you’re gathering wild foods, you’re immediately reminded that plants aren’t neutral. Many are toxic if consumed improperly, and learning about them forces us to respect their power. The wild teaches us about plant defenses — lectins, phytates, oxalates, glycoalkaloids, and other compounds that still exist in grocery store produce but are largely ignored thanks to generations of selective breeding and marketing.

Even if you’re not eating many plants, foraging is still worth your time. It allows you to witness seasonality firsthand — watching plants emerge, grow, mature, die back, and start over again each year. Once you begin foraging, you’ll never look at a patch of weeds the same way again. You’ll see potential. You’ll see patterns. You’ll see food.

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Foraging is Everywhere — and for Everyone

Wild plants grow in forests, fields, beaches, vacant lots, schoolyards, and even the cracks in sidewalks. You might be shocked by what’s already in your own yard.

In fact, while writing this, I stepped outside the Modern Stone Age Kitchen and found six wild spring edibles and medicinals within five minutes — dandelion, mouse ear chickweed, wood sorrel, henbit, mugwort, and spiny sow thistle — all growing right here on our campus in downtown Chestertown.

One of the most beautiful things about foraging is that it puts you in touch with every single step of the meal process: identification, harvest, processing, cooking, serving, sharing, and consuming. That’s an incredibly rare experience in today’s food system — and a deeply human one.

You can forage alone for reflection or with others for connection. Either way, it brings you into your surroundings in a meaningful, practical, and nourishing way.

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This Week’s Pizza Was Inspired by Foraging

This week’s pizza special, Forager’s Gold, was born out of this seasonal abundance. Our friend and customer Mike Johnson gifted us a bag of gorgeous yellow oyster mushrooms — and we built the entire pizza around that gift.

We paired the roasted mushrooms with fermented ramps and finished it with fresh-picked chickweed to honor the wild flavors of spring. Foraging is contagious — in the best way. Our good friends Amy Haines and Richard Marx, the owners of Out of the Fire in Easton, were just out foraging ramps in the Catskill Mountains. It’s that time of year!

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Getting Started — Foraging Safely

If you’re curious about getting started, here are a few important tips to keep you safe:

1. Know the land use history of your foraging location. Avoid areas that may be sprayed with chemicals or contaminated.

2. Identify plants using at least three sources (field guides, plant ID apps, experienced foragers). When in doubt, don’t harvest.

3. Harvest sustainably. Never take more than you need, and leave enough for regeneration and wildlife.

4. Process wild plants properly. Some require leaching, boiling, fermenting, or other preparation steps to be safe and nourishing. Safe foraging starts at identification but ends in the kitchen.

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Want to See Foraging in Action?

During COVID, I filmed a foraging segment for Wired Magazine right in my own neighborhood. It’s a great place to start if you're looking for inspiration — and proof that wild foods really are all around us.

👉 Watch the Wired Foraging Video Here

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Want to Preserve the Wild Flavors of Spring? Try These Two Ramp Recipes

Whether you forage them yourself or source them from a friend or farmer, ramps are one of spring’s most iconic and fleeting wild edibles.

Here are two simple ways to preserve their flavor and get the most out of every part of the plant:

Fermented Ramps

Ingredients:

• Fresh ramps

• Sea salt

• Water

Instructions:

1. Trim the leaves from the ramps and reserve them for making ramp salt.

2. Carefully trim the small rootlets from the base.

3. Place a mason jar on a kitchen scale (set to grams) and press “tare.”

4. Add the trimmed ramps to the jar, packing them tightly if possible.

5. Fill the jar with water until it just covers the ramps, leaving at least ½ inch of headspace.

6. Record the combined weight of the ramps and water. Multiply that total weight by 2% — this is the amount of salt you’ll need.

7. Pour the water into a separate bowl, dissolve the calculated amount of salt into it, then pour the salted water back into the jar.

8. Make sure ramps are entirely submerged - weigh down with fermentation weight or ziplock filled with salt water if needed.

9. Cover loosely and ferment at room temperature for approximately 10 days, then transfer to cold storage.

Use fermented ramps as a tangy, probiotic-rich addition to pizzas, charcuterie boards, or salads.

Ramp Salt

Ingredients:

• Ramp leaves (reserved from making fermented ramps)

• Sea salt

Instructions:

1. Dry the ramp leaves in a dehydrator or freeze-dry them in a freeze dryer until fully crisp.

2. Place the dried leaves in a spice grinder or high-powered blender and pulverize into a fine powder.

3. Measure the volume of ramp leaf powder.

4. Add half as much sea salt by volume (e.g., for 1 cup of ramp powder, add ½ cup of salt).

5. Stir to combine and store in a sealed mason jar.

Use ramp salt like you would onion salt — on roasted vegetables, eggs, meats, or anything that needs a wild, garlicky punch.

Happy foraging — and don’t forget to check the edges of your lawn.
You might just find dinner waiting to be discovered.

Schindlers foraging in the Wicklow Mountains outside of Dublin, Ireland (2017)