Commons Feast Virtual Monthly Meet Up

Extending The Commons Feast, which formed part of The Commons: Re-Enchanting the World project and inspired by Mo Wilde's, The Commons Feast Virtual Monthly Meet-Up is a regular online gathering to share knowledge and companion around wild and commons foods and medicines.

The event is informed by the work of forager and herbalist Mo Wilde through her book in The Wilderness Cure (2022), Potawatomi botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass (2013), and forager and educator Robin Harford’s The Eatweeds Cookbook (2015), in which he proposes to “eat something wild every day”.

These events function as participatory performances, guided by a Fluxus-inspired score:

Forage for a wild/free/commons/foraged/spontaneous ingredient/s in your local landscape and prepare something from it to eat and/or drink to share and discuss.

Learning about and gathering free, organic, nutritious wild food in abundance is a political act—one of resistance against capitalism and the historical erasure wrought by enclosure. While we do not go as far as Mo Wilde who, on Black Friday 2020, committed to eating only wild food for a year, our gatherings foster knowledge-sharing, the rediscovery of foods and medicines from the commons, and the exchange of preparation methods alongside other intersecting ideas and practices around ecology, food security, colonialism, the commons...

All are welcome whether you are a seasoned veteran of foraging, or a complete beginner and never eaten so much as a blackberry from a hedgerow! I am very excited to see where the experiment goes, as we collectively witness the seasons together through our wild foods and landscapes. Of course, if you aren’t able to forage for anything for an event, you are also still welcome to join the fun.

For further resources and information, go to:

https://commonsfeast.substack.com

https://www.instagram.com/amandacouch_art/

https://commonsfeast.substack.com/p/some-foraging-resources-february-2023