Wild Eats Experiment

While still living at the wilderness homestead, I spent as much of one year living entirely on foods gathered from natural sources as possible, including fruits (choke cherries, gooseberries, wax currants, wild strawberries, crabapples, rose hips), vegetables (bracken fiddleheads, nodding onion, watercress, and lamb's quarters), meats (squirrel, rabbit, turkey, beaver), and herbs (wild mint, wild hops, yarrow, juniper berries, sorrel) and some pine nuts. As this experiment progressed, I had strange dreams of becoming one with nature, literally.

Having wrapped up most all of the heavy chores required to prepare for winter, I was able to manage okay on the canned and frozen fare from these sources until mid March when I finally had to dip into the store-bought supplies. This experiment was successful in that I didn't poison myself and never experienced any physiological distress from eating wild stuff, but I do have to admit that eagerly returning to pork, chicken, beef, fish and breads, etc. as sources of nourishment was a wonderful end to it, reminding me how tasty those foods are.