By Mary Pannabecker Steiner
One of my brothers lives in the mountains of Virginia where he regularly picks a variety of wild berries on his runs up the mountainside and into the woods. This never really impressed me because I don't like blackberries and raspberries so why bother picking them?
Or at least that was my perspective until I heard Hank Shaw talk about hunting, fishing, and foraging your own food. Shaw, the author of "Hunt, Gather, Cook: Finding the Forgotten Feast", offers advice to anyone interested in taking a more active role in determining what they feed themselves and their families.
Ironically, during a recent run I was listening to Shaw's conversation on a Splendid Table podcast. A few minutes later, I stopped near a favorite rock to take a break. There, within an arm's reach, grew a rambling bush of wild blackberries.
I grabbed a few, shoved them in my shorts pocket for my husband and decided to return later in the week to pick more. The next day, the destructive derecho windstorm swept through our part of Ohio, replacing those visions of blackberries with downed ancient trees, power lines, and a week of struggling back to normality.
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