Nancy Hildebrand
The Food Forager
In collaboration with
Story by Stephany Hildebrand
Photos by Stephany Hildebrand
We all connect to nature in different ways. For some, it’s through a walk, hike, snowshoe or cross country ski in the great outdoors. For others, it’s heading out to a river to paddle a kayak, canoe, or paddleboard. For foragers, that bond comes from collecting wild foods.
The ability to find wild foodstuffs signals an intimate entanglement with nature. Foragers must be in tune with the smallest signs for the changing of the seasons: the first frost, the change in bird song, the flowering of each plant. They need to understand the conditions that must exist for the survival of each plant: the soil, sunlight, the humidity of the environment.
My mom, Nancy Hildebrand, is a forager. She nurtured this love of ferreting out wild foods from a young age, growing up in St. Agathe Des Monts, Quebec. Her father, a German immigrant, enjoyed taking her out on his mushroom picking outings; while there, he also taught her to identify edibles like sorel, dandelion, and St. John’s wort. But her greatest leap in knowledge came after she moved to Ontario in the late 1990s. Mom says in some ways, this region seems to have more diversity of foodstuff compared to the Laurentian region.
Nancy sees all these foods as gifts of nature and takes her responsibility as a steward of the land seriously. She abides by a set of “rules” that true foragers follow:
We all connect to nature in different ways. For some, it’s through a walk, hike, snowshoe or cross country ski in the great outdoors. For others, it’s heading out to a river to paddle a kayak, canoe, or paddleboard. For foragers, that bond comes from collecting wild foods.
The ability to find wild foodstuffs signals an intimate entanglement with nature. Foragers must be in tune with the smallest signs for the changing of the seasons: the first frost, the change in bird song, the flowering of each plant. They need to understand the conditions that must exist for the survival of each plant: the soil, sunlight, the humidity of the environment.
My mom, Nancy Hildebrand, is a forager. She nurtured this love of ferreting out wild foods from a young age, growing up in St. Agathe Des Monts, Quebec. Her father, a German immigrant, enjoyed taking her out on his mushroom picking outings; while there, he also taught her to identify edibles like sorel, dandelion, and St. John’s wort. But her greatest leap in knowledge came after she moved to Ontario in the late 1990s. Mom says in some ways, this region seems to have more diversity of foodstuff compared to the Laurentian region.
Nancy sees all these foods as gifts of nature and takes her responsibility as a steward of the land seriously. She abides by a set of “rules” that true foragers follow:
Armed with lived experience and knowledge gleaned from her studies in environmental studies, she and her husband, Alpha, now spend every summer searching out places where they can collect their food. Their home is filled with collections from foraging expeditions: black walnuts, tea, berries, mushrooms, dandelions, cattail, chamomile, purslane, lamb’s quarters, and stinging nettle to name a few.
When I was growing up, our family foraged in the Laurentians. These wild spaces were incredibly fertile, carpeted with blueberries, strawberries and mushrooms. We would return every year to pick all the foods we could ever want. Sadly, one of our favourite picking spots was developed and the berry patches were replaced by a rock quarry. You can imagine the devastation our family felt.
My mom, for one, deeply understands the precariousness of nature and the pressures of deforestation and development. For her, maintaining a connection to the environment is important and she encourages others to pick sustainably—especially for things like the popular wild garlic—so that we can maintain ecological balance, access wild foods, and most importantly, continue to foster a deep connection with nature.
“Foraging makes us aware of ecological balance and the need to protect it. If we don’t have that, we’ll lose an important part of who we are.”
-Nancy Hildebrand
In collaboration with
Story by Stephany Hildebrand
Photos by Stephany Hildebrand
