 It's been 18 days without salt. Cheers. Fresh, oceany, very salty. So for the last 18 days, I have been eating off the land. Every single bite that I've eaten, I have foraged. You've seen me in the past do my year of growing and foraging 100% of my food, but this time every bite is coming from food that I'm not growing or coming from other people's gardens either, but foraging from the land, from nature, from wild places, from urban spaces. And for the last 18 days, I have not had any salt but I've just arrived here on the East Coast. I'm in Boston and this is really going to complete my diet from the land. Down to the herbs and spices I've had to learn the new palette for how to meet my diet, meet my nutritional needs without having so many of things that I'm used to having from a garden and that so many others are used to having from a grocery store. And I have to say that the biggest challenge so far over the last month has not been finding the food. Food is growing everywhere. The challenge has actually been having enough time to harvest all of it. There's so much of it growing and the time to process it and preserve it. I'm feeling really good. My body feels great. I'm in great health after 18 days of eating just from the land. And I'm really excited now that I'm here with my saltwater to share with you how the last few weeks have been going. So I'm going to share that with you. Hello, dear friends. It's been a day since the saltwater yesterday. The sun went down and I didn't have a chance to do this yesterday. So here I am, which means it's day 20 of foraging 100% of my food from the land. And I want to share with you how the journey has been so far and I'm really excited to share because it's been a very full September. Today is September 29th, 2022 and I began this endeavor a month ago. The whole premise of this adventure, this journey, this mission for me is I want to reconnect with our plant relatives. I want to deepen my relationship with the earth and for me, one of the greatest ways to do that is to know the plants that are growing around us and know how I can work with them as food and medicine, but not in a way where I'm just out here to take. That's not what I'm out here to do at all. It's about learning to live in reciprocity. Going to the grocery stores, that's what I consider taking. There's nothing being given back to the earth. And so I want to feed myself in a way that feeds my soul, feeds my community and feeds the earth. And I believe I can do that by learning all of the plant friends that are around me and learning how I can work with them as food and medicine and how I can care for them and make sure that they're around decade after decade to feed more and more people and to nourish us. I decided what a great way to do that would be to live only on food that I can forage. In the past, I had done my year of growing and foraging all my food and a lot of my food was foraged then, but I, you know, my herbs and my spices, so much of that came from my garden and so many of my calories. And it was a beautiful experience, but I wanted to dive into this and see if I could live just off the food that's growing by the earth. And so that's what I'm doing. And I decided that I would go about this in sort of an extreme way. And that is that I would start off with no food whatsoever. And I would give myself less than two weeks to start harvesting and processing the food to launch into the month of eating 100% food from the land. So I had a very strong calling to go up to Northern Wisconsin, where I'm from, and to Wisconsin in general to the Great Lakes region. So I left Asheville, North Carolina, drove up North, where I also really have a strong connection to the land. And that's where I began. And I gave myself basically nine days of foraging and processing that food to get myself ready for the month of eating wild. So I'd love to share with you how I've been nourishing myself, the food and the medicines that I've been harvesting from the land. It really started with wild rice, manomen, the food that grows on water. And that's one of the big reasons why I headed to the Great Lakes region, because that is where the food grows on water. The first day I harvested between me and my teammate, Grace, we each took home about 30 pounds finished of wild rice, which was what I needed for the entire month. So in one day I harvested what I needed for the month with the idea being wild rice is about 1,900 calories per pound. And one pound a day would, you know, provide my caloric needs more or less. The second day I went out, I actually did really well. That was with my friend Gil Schwartz. And we each got about 45 pounds of finished rice. So I have a lot of rice to bring me through the winter as well to enjoy. The other really big thing was apples. I knew I had to go into this with a large amount of apple sauce for my sustenance, for my joy. And so up in Northern Wisconsin, just shaking the apple trees, it's very much an apple region. And so I was just enjoying the apples. And then pears are another fruit to go along with that. And also plums. So I love to make apple sauce and fruit sauces from those. Along with that are my high vitamin fruits, like aronia berries, choke cherries, grapes. These are your really nutrient dense, smaller fruits. And I've been eating a lot of those throughout. Didn't get nearly as much of the choke cherries. That was kind of a bummer. I didn't have time for that. And I also didn't have a time for the hazelnuts, which was something that I was so excited about up north. So that first nine days up north was bountiful. It was plentiful. I harvested a lot of my herbs as well up there. A lot of my medicinal teas. The other big nourishment is greens. Greens are super nutrient dense. And I try to eat a lot of greens every single day. I've been eating a lot of watercress that's delicious and strong coming out of the different springs where I've been harvesting my water. Sochan. A lot of your typical weeds like dameline and plantago. And of course this life would not be complete for me without mushrooms. So the abundance has been my toki, hen of the woods. I've been finding that numerous times and then chicken of the woods. It hasn't been a super bountiful year for mushrooms so far it was a drought in Northern Wisconsin, I would say. But I've also been eating some others shrimp of the woods and oh, a lot of golden oysters, which is a new one for me. I've harvested two deer that have been hit by cars. Not all of it, just parts of it. And so I've had an abundance of deer. Black walnuts I've been diving into. Butternuts as well. And then some new nuts. Actually I got into the ginko seed or the ginko nut and that is a wonderful one. I've been roasting those and that's been a really wonderful surprise. And then hackberries are sort of a nut that I've been getting into and that's been an interesting one. Of course my medicines are coming from the land as well and my food is my medicine but there's some extra medicinal plants. Elderberry is one that I'm very called to. And this time around I'm even harvesting all of my water wild. So all of my water is pure from the earth without the additional chemicals like chlorine and fluoride that are pumped into it in city systems. So this time around even my water is coming from the earth all foraged as well. And of course I have to mention stinging nettle. Stinging nettle is the essence of this diet both for eating in large quantities and also making a lot of tea. And as far as herbs, a lot of medicinal herbs. I made a tea blend which is eight different medicines that I have every day multiple times per day. That includes herbs like mint and bee balm and St. John's wort, mullin, goldenrod. I will be doing a complete video that shows all the foods that I've eaten and how you can fully live off of food that you forage. And today I'm just introducing you to a little bit of the diet that has overall sustained me. Of course I need spices, I need flavor. And flavor's been a struggle because I haven't had salt as you know from the beginning of this video. The last meal that I had last night with salt in it, oh, I could taste the flavors in that pot that I have not been able to taste. They were there but salt, the sea salt just really brought it out. But the most important flavors, the spices have been, well the big one was wild ramps. I dug up some bulbs. Of course one of the big keys to this is can you do this sustainably? Absolutely, it's all about understanding each plant and knowing how to work with it. So digging up a small portion of wild leek bulbs that grow in a patch. Wild onions, wild onions have been incredibly important to my diet. Mustard and garlic mustard, the actual seeds. And there's been a lot of different herbs and spices but actually to be honest that's where I've been lacking. Because of my year of growing and foraging all my food I was really dependent upon the domesticated herbs and spices and so one of the big challenges of this month is learning how I can meet my needs off the land in a flavorful, desirable way by working with all the flavors of the land and bringing them together to make delicious meals. And I've got the salt now and in the days ahead I'm definitely wanting to put more energy into figuring out each of these herbs. So I'm definitely not eating just day by day like a lot of people think. That just doesn't work. The key is you have to harvest the bounty and you preserve it. So a lot of that has been through dehydration. I have a dehydrator with me drying and then I have a pressure canner with me. I do pressure canning and water bath canning and that's really important. So drying and dehydrating but I'm also carrying a cooler as well which has been key. So a lot of foods each day that I'm harvesting but really living off food that I'm harvesting in quantities and then saving it for later. So as I mentioned my big goal of this was to reconnect with so many of our plant friends and learn more plants and I've done just that. It's been a month of immersion in this and I have to say it's... Oh, I just realized I'm sitting in a mulberry tree. I mean, food is everywhere. Every... And mulberry leaves by the way are edible. This is an amazing mulberry tree. Oh my gosh. So it's been beautiful. I've been learning a lot of new plants and like for example, evening primrose. That's a new one for me, the seeds and the roots I've eaten. So it's been beautiful. And I would say about three weeks in I can say like I've managed to have a pretty complete diet from the land. What I haven't had enough of is the fat or the oil. I know I can get that. That can be from hickory nut oil which I will be working with soon. And then of course fat from deer but I just haven't done that yet. I mean, just think about it. This was me diving in giving myself just nine days of preparation and diving in and I'm able to be doing this. It's, to me, I'm feeling the power. I'm feeling that the earth provides that food is growing freely and abundantly all around us and I am incredibly excited not just for the next about 11 days of this month but for the months and the years ahead. I have been, I've really seen that I can live just off food that I forage. And I've done it with relative ease to be honest. I'm not bragging or anything like that. I'm just sharing like it's been relatively easy considering this is my first time living completely off food that I forage. Just one note in the long run, my intentions is of course to eat food from gardens as well and from small farms that's grown regeneratively, that's grown ethically. I'm all about it. So wild or domesticated both make a part of a regenerative society. But so incredibly excited about what I'm learning and how far I've come over the last month. As far as what's to come in the rest of this journey, I'm in Boston now and for the rest of this time I'm traveling the East Coast and in each city that I visit I'm leading a plant walk where I teach people how they can reconnect with the earth. So I'm actually doing a plant walk in an hour here in Boston and then is Providence, Rhode Island, New Haven, Connecticut and then New York City, Dover, Delaware, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Washington DC. I believe that's all of them and DC is on October 9th. So no grocery stores for me for now. It's all coming from the land. Nature is my garden, it's my pantry and it is my pharmacy and I am just absolutely in love. And I would not do this project just to eat. That's not what this is about. This project is really about helping you to reconnect with the earth. I want you to see that we can break free from consumerism, we can break free from capitalism, we can tear down these colonialistic patriarchal systems, these dominator oppressive cultures. And I think one of the ways we can start is by starting to reconnect with the earth and again, breaking free from the consumerism and capitalism and this right here, connecting to the earth and foraging is a big part of that equation. It's not everything but it's a really big part of it because when you start to see what I see, you start to look at the world in a different way. So I invite you to come out and join me in these cities. I will be the wild guy living off the land in the city and you're all invited to come out and learn, join me in some foraging, join me in reconnecting with the earth. I love you all very much and more videos to come, I'm gonna be sharing some more like in-depth videos on how you can live completely off the land in cold climates or warmer climates and teaching some basic foraging skills and what else do you wanna know? Let me know in the comments below and if you're not already, definitely feel free to subscribe. I will see you again soon. I love you all very much.