Urban Foraging: Can I have some of your figs?
BY CLAIRE BARBER
This time of year, as summer winds into autumn, I think of this encounter often. Living in the Pacific Northwest has given me a new joy of found food and produce, particularly urban food foraging. Oregon was the first place I lived where so much grew so abundantly. Here, people had garden boxes in nearly every inch of their yards and friends kept their eyes peeled for chanterelle mushrooms in the woods. I snipped nettle for pesto or drove up abandoned logging roads for Himalayan blackberries. My neighbors had overflowing raspberry canes and plum trees and fig trees and crab apples and were begging people to take fruit off of their hands.
“It’s just a really lovely way to experience seasons, your neighborhood, and being outdoors,” said Maria Finn, chef, foraging guide, and author of Forage, Gather, Feast. Finn, who has been eating wild foods for over two decades, advises that newcomers to foraging and urban foraging check in with their community—to consult books and apps, sure, but also their local university extensions, mycological societies, and neighbors for foraging advice and permission. Check if you need a permit, and always keep an eye out to harvest responsibly especially on traditional, Native lands, like is the case for huckleberries.
“Anchovy season is going to end soon, seaweed will end fairly soon, but the mussel season and the clam season and the crab season are gonna start up and then the rains will bring mushrooms,” said Finn of the upcoming fall in Northern California. Finn notes that beginners should also keep an eye out for rose hips, nuts, and fennel. Finn recently came across a fog band that bore a bounty of hedge hog mushrooms.
“ What I am really encouraging people to do is to have a relationship with nature and to create a sense of stewardship with the nature that's around them, and to get to know their neighbors,” said Finn. “If your neighbor has a whole bunch of figs on their tree, you know, maybe you knock on their door, leave them a note and say, ‘Hey, can I take some of your figs?’”
