Produce foraged fresh

We’ve come a long way from our hunter gatherer roots, but Britt Coker met one local who still spends time seeking wild plants in the woods.

Cynthia van de Loo hasn’t bought fruit, leafy greens or herbal teas from a supermarket for about 25 years. Instead, almost every morning she gets up early and forages on the Grampians or other nearby green spaces. She’s not looking for wild lettuces or broccoli, but uncultivated plants that have existed pre the agricultural revolution. Plants like dandelion, puha, chickweed, plantain, and cleavers (bidibid). Greens most of us would term ‘weeds’ and treat as such. But that’s not a word Cynthia ever uses, she sees them more as super-foods rather than super-annoying. She says they are all full of vitamins, minerals and medicinal properties and harvesting them fresh ensures you are getting the goodness of live enzymes rather than the less-than-live enzymes in supermarket options. The tidy, well-lit aisles don’t satisfy us the way a hunter gatherer lifestyle does either, or offer a peaceful moment in leafy solitude.

“Foraging connects me deeply to the plants. It allows me to be quiet and spend time in nature and listen and really get a better understanding of what their needs are. I get really excited if I find a lush patch of chickweed because the simple act of seeking and finding creates happy endorphins. It’s highly important for our well-being actually, to be doing that. That’s what we did years ago, and being self-sufficient is empowering.”

Cynthia’s plant knowledge in the early days came from a combination of in-the-field workshops with experts, and plenty of reading. She has now been taking her own half-day workshops for over two decades for locals keen to confidently identify wild plants for eating.

“We i.d between 50 and 60 plants and I am really interested in sharing more knowledge of the indigenous worldview of how to be with the plants and the land and all the beings that we live amongst. Sharing the importance of really honouring the plants and being able to communicate and listen to them. The importance of reciprocity is really one of the key things for me because every time I take, I ask myself, what can I give back to this being?” (Her answer is compost, sending loving energy and chanting).

If you’re keen to forage locally, keep in mind public places are sprayed with herbicides. Cynthia says there is no public record of what places are safe in Nelson, but you can call the council to find out. She looks after a no-spray zone community area near her house and has plenty of wild plants populating her garden. She’d love it if there were more herbicide free areas but recognises this will only happen if more people ask for them.

She was living in Lyttleton when the 2011 earthquakes hit and found her daily foraging was a useful skill to have when you are in survival mode, as everyone was during Covid lockdowns. Being self-sufficient offers some sense of control in your life if reliance on supermarkets for fresh produce is not an option. Foraged crops are also free, a stark contrast to the heavy price paid by us all as we live through the current economic climate.

Cynthia also has a vegetable garden and fruit trees, so supplements them with her foraging of nuts, fruit, mushrooms and greens. New Zealand does have its share of poisonous plants so it’s important to know exactly what you’re collecting and if in doubt, don’t harvest it. “I’m very cautious of berries and mushrooms. You only want to take them if you absolutely know what you’re looking at.”

For most of us, it’s easier to begin in our backyard as there’s usually plenty of wild plants there, or soon will be if you give them a chance. Start by looking twice at your dandelions. “You can use every part of the dandelion, from the flower to make honey, the leaves that you can use in salads and smoothies, and the root can be roasted to make dandelion coffee.” And there’s plenty more options where the dandelion came from.

“Plantain, cleavers, chickweed, puha, nettle, miners’ lettuce, speedwell oh there’s heaps. They all have a massive amount of medicinal properties; there’d be between 10 and 20 different medicinal properties for each plant. My two favourites are probably the miners’ lettuce and the chickweed because they’re just sweet and succulent and have a milder flavour.”

Spying something tasty and unloved in a friend’s place generally elicits
the same response from all benefactors. “Oh, take as much as you want.”
Translation: That’ll save us a weeding job later.

A vegan for two decades, it was a book published 50 years ago that changed how Cynthia felt about eating greens. The Secret Life of Plants by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird reveals unconventional results from scientific experiments on plants.

“It showed that plants are sentient beings, the same as humans and animals and they have feelings and emotions and a pulse. Different experiments have shown that when, for instance, you’ve got an indoor plant and you know if you’re really loving and caring for it and then you go away, that when that person came back, that plant got all excited; it changed its whole energy.”

She’s an advocate for talking to your plants. Though telepathic communication works too. “You open your heart and actually love and care for them like you would for an animal or a human.”

While communicating with your plants is not unanimously supported by the scientific community, it is widely accepted that plants at least communicate amongst themselves. Mycelium (thin white strands of fungi) create a wood-wide web, connecting plants together to transfer water, nitrogen, carbon and other minerals. And possibly messages. For instance, in a greenhouse experiment, it was reported that tomato plants infected with the disease Early Blight (Alternaria solani) sent signals to their healthy neighbours, which responded by producing defensive enzymes to help protect them from infection.

But caring for plants and seeing them as sentient beings comes with its drawbacks. “I really want to be as conscious as I can around them. For a while after I deep dived into reading that book, I didn’t want to eat at all. I just became really sensitive. It was always about honouring the plants, but I didn’t realise the extent of how much plants are the same as us. For me now, I’m not feeling any hierarchy. I’m not superior to any plant or animal or any other being, and so for me cutting a limb off a tree is just as painful and hard for me as to be asking you if I can cut your arm off.”

Cynthia recognised that not eating greens was counterproductive and spent a bit of time making peace with the idea. This has brought her to a place of ‘an honourable harvest’ which means among other things, thanking the plants, minimising harm and only taking what she needs. “While meditating I put a lot of energy into the plants, allowing my heart to open and just feeding them universal energy. I want them to feel me as much as I feel them, and how I care for them.”

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