Wild forager, plant whisperer, herbal chef, and author of Foraged & Wild, Tara's life is a devotion to the land. A celebration of the healing, nourishing, and magic of wild plants. This month, we honor her unique voice and the way she weaves foraged food, botanical rituals, and her reverence for the earth into every facet of her life and work.
1. Your recipes beautifully combine traditional plant knowledge and culinary innovation. How did your journey into foraging and culinary herbalism begin, and how has it deepened your connection to the Earth?
A. I think my journey began with a deep and lifelong love of plants and being in nature, and a fascination with food. I felt more relaxed and more at home in the woods than I did inside. I think many of us feel this, but I just always wanted to be outside, in contact with the earth. From around 9 years old, I was shopping for and preparing food with my best friend for my parents and for his family, and I learned to tend to a garden with my grandparents when I would stay with them every summer.
I think like many herbalists I came to this path through healing. I had a lot of digestive, autoimmune, and chronic health issues that were debilitating by the time I was 19 years old, and this set me on the plant medicine path. I was seeking to heal what was happening in my body, and the plants were calling. I studied to become a naturalist, which was a focus on ecology, botany, and conservation and I fell in love with foraging and herbal medicine. I felt at home in nature, and it became a guiding force in my life. I made gardens wherever I was and began incorporating edible flowers and herbs into my regular meals. The natural world became a constant guide and presence in my life, and I found I could "hear" what the plants were calling for and often could sense what people needed or might benefit from in the form of food infused with herbs.
My life has been very much centered on honoring the land, tending and making offerings to the plants and land where I live from New Mexico to Colorado, and this has deepened my relationship to the Earth. I believe the plants and the land are waiting for us to connect to them wherever we are in the world. They appreciate our attention, our care and devotion, our noticing. It is one of the deepest relationships I have known. I think it is a fundamental part of being human. We are made fo them and vice versa.
2. How do the changing seasons influence your approach to foraging and creating?
Everything is changed by the seasons, and as we have been farming and/or foraging for more than two decades, I have moved into a rhythm of preserving what I am able when things are growing and blooming and then working with the preserved foods and herbal remedies in the off-season.
It is the best feeling in the world to step outside in the spring and see the first nettles coming through the leaf cover, and the first violets and dandelions blooming through the intermittent snow of early spring in Colorado. Spring is all about bringing things back to life and vitality and getting the bitter greens into our bodies to wake everything up and reconnect to the green, vibrant world.
Summer is a wild rush of activity, seemingly endless harvesting and preserving, while very gratefully eating and sharing in so many fresh veggies, flowers and plants. Summer is very hot and dry where we live so I love to be in the high mountains as much as possible, searching for mushrooms in the cooler elevations and I am creating more with the fresh plants like salads and bright berries and cooling rose petal drinks and desserts.
In Autumn, my attention shifts to the roots and the bigger preserving and harvesting projects, but also to the sweeter things coming in, and supporting the immune system and overall health with things like elderberry and fire cider, but also hearty medicinal broths and rich soups.
Winter is the inward turning and I mostly work with what I have preserved over the growing season, but I may collect spruce for vitamin C-rich teas and oxymels. Broth making continues and baked goods and warming roots become the focus. I work with calendula much more in the winter as a skin healer and barrier, and add it into broths. Winter is the time to dream forward into the next year's garden and projects and I spend a lot of time writing and creating, working with plants for dreaming.
3. If you could only forage and work with one plant for the rest of your life, which one would it be and why?
Nettles! Nettles are my number one plant for many reasons, not the least of which is their incredible bright spirit. I met nettles when I was a child and I felt immediately connected to them, but was not sure why until I was much older. I think this is often the way with plants; the relationship may start as a subtle tug on your consciousness and then it evolves into being one of your greatest plant connections. Nettles have been a huge influence in my life, and I cannot think of another plant that has held more of my attention over the last 30 years. I made nettle soup the cover of my book, Foraged and Grown, to honor the healing and beauty they have brought into my life.
Nettles are an ancestral plant for nearly everyone on earth; they grow everywhere except Antarctica, and they are one of the most nutrient-dense plants that we have available. They are a plant that I work with topically, as a food in everything from soups to doughnuts, and as a medicine to work with allergies, stress, joint pain, nourishment, digestion, respiratory issues, etc. Nettles can also be made into clothing, can be used as a plant dye, and they make an excellent green compost for the garden. Energetically they are powerful guardians and help us to hold boundaries and stay focused. There is truly an endless list of reasons I love them, and I also am always surprised by them in new ways. I think one of the most amazing things about working with the plants is that they can show up differently for you every time you meet them. I think it is the same with people. We have to let ourselves be surprised, allow them to meet us in new ways, and that is definitely how my relationship with nettles has unfolded over the years.
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