How Maine foragers find pantry staples in the wild

Frank Giglio collected ramps Sunday, pickled Japanese Knotweed and cattails Monday, and on Tuesday he planned to visit the Sebasticook River to net alewives.

The Lincolnville resident, chef, recipe developer and former homesteader is one forager working to eat more wild food as a part of regular life, what he calls a “full spectrum diet.”

While the growing season’s start brings to mind rows of cultivated lettuce, carrots and tomatoes, more than 2,000 edible native and naturalized plants also become available in quick succession in Maine summers.

“The seasonal calendar is overwhelming,” said Mike Douglas, adult programs director for the Maine Primitive Skills School in Augusta. “There’s a tsunami of wild abundance.”

Wild greens can become a part of a regular diet if consumers get used to bitter tastes — try eating a dandelion a day to develop your taste buds, Douglas said. Giglio, meanwhile, encourages not to get discouraged if only a small part of your diet comes from wild plants; they’ll still be there next year, he said.

Most foraged plants are available for a few days to a few weeks and don’t store well, but some can become pantry staples, such as acorn flour and wild rice.

Acorns can be stored in their shells for three to five years after harvest. Processing takes about a month, a commitment Giglio enjoys.

“I want to partake in something that was a staple food for thousands of years around the globe,” he said. “To me, it’s important that I keep the knowledge going.”

Part of that means involving the next generation — last year, his entire acorn harvest was gathered with the help of four kids, playing games and competing to fill their baskets from two trees within a quarter mile of Giglio’s home.

Rice can grow in Maine with careful cultivation , but also appears wild in rivers across the state, where it was traditionally harvested by Native Americans.

Most rice populations are in state-managed waters and publicly accessible, but Douglas stressed the way it’s harvested matters. Traditional methods using a canoe and long sticks to knock the rice grains down will land a third of them into the vessel and propel the rest into the water to reseed.

“It’s an approach that may not seem efficient to an engineer,” he said. But anything on a larger scale could risk the population.

The same principle goes for any native and non-cultivated plants. Douglas notes a difference between foraging, or eating plants from natural areas, and caretaking them based on traditional methods and careful observation.

Before harvesting, he tells students to learn how to propagate the plant, observe its life cycle, collect its seeds and plant them.

“If you’re going to start taking more than you’re giving, that plant won’t be there anymore,” he said.