Foraging Quotes

When the seagulls follow the trawler, it is because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea.

Guy Nearing told us it's a good idea when hunting mushrooms to have a pleasant goal, a waterfall for instance, and, having reached it, to return another way. When, however, we're obliged to go and come back by the same path, returning we notice mushrooms we hadn't noticed going out.

The men of experiment are like the ant, they only collect and use; the reasoners resemble spiders, who make cobwebs out of their own substance. But the bee takes the middle course, it gathers its material from the flowers of the garden and field, but transforms and digests it by a power of its own.

What is not good for the swarm is not good for the bees.

A bee is never as busy as it seems; it's just that it can't buzz any slower.

Man's survival, from the time of Adam and Eve until the invention of agriculture, must have been precarious because of his inability to ensure his food supply.

The life of a swarm of bees is like an active and hazardous campaign of an army: the ranks are being continually depleted and continually recruited.

Reminds me of my safari in Africa. Somebody forgot the corkscrew and for several days we had to live on nothing but food and water.

Together, the ants eat the elephant.

As human pastoralists discovered 8,000 years ago, raising animals can be an efficient way of harnessing otherwise unusable resources such as grass.

My mother was a midwife and a herbalist, so we would go on these long walks, looking for yarrow or rosehips or whatever she needed to make her tinctures.

I talk to children in schools all over the world, and I've found that both boys and girls are fascinated by how hunter-gatherers manage to survive entirely on what's around them in their environment: trees, rocks, animals and plants.

There are trees of a thousand sorts, and all have their several fruits; and I feel the most unhappy man in the world not to know them, for I am well assured that they are all valuable. I bring home specimens of them, and also of the land.

Bring war material with you from home, but forage on the enemy... use the conquered foe to augment one's own strength.

Part of the beauty of wilderness schooling is that the overheads are very low. You want a classroom? Build a shelter from nature's store. You want to eat? Forage for it.

I remember, as a kid, I'd follow the rooster and the chickens and watch what type of grass they'd eat. And me and my friends would eat that grass, like that was our lunch.

Baboons take a bit of getting to know but, apparently, once you break the ice, so to speak, they are complex and interesting creatures with elaborate societies.

Wait a minute! This is grass! We've been eating grass!

We would load up the yellow Cutlass Supreme station wagon and pick blackberries during blackberry season or spring onions during spring onion season. For us, food was part of the fabric of our day.

Tomorrow's a hunting day," I say. "I won't be much of a help with that," Peeta says. "I've never hunted before." "I'll kill and you cook," I say. "And you can always gather." "I wish there was some sort of bread bush out there," says Peeta.

When the blackberries hang swollen in the woods, in the brambles nobody owns, I spend all day among the high branches, reaching my ripped arms, thinking of nothing, cramming the black honey of summer into my mouth; all day my body accepts what it is. In the dark creeks that run by there is this thick paw of my life darting among the black bells, the leaves; there is this happy tongue.

We eat, therefore we hunt.

I do like going out and finding free food. I've done it since I was a child. Fishing prawns and shrimps from the sea is wonderful, as is picking blackberries, sloes and mushrooms. Having a guide while out looking for mushrooms is really important, though, as picking the wrong type can be quite dangerous.

My dad liked to boil a squirrel head and suck the brains out the nose. Smaller than a chicken, bigger than a rat.

A lion's work hours are only when he's hungry; once he's satisfied, the predator and prey live peacefully together.