Wildcrafting

An Alternate Lifestyle

Wildcrafting is the art of collecting wild things from nature to sell – and believe it or not, there is a huge market for wild mushrooms and fiddle head ferns for high end restaurants; Paxistima myrsinites or Oregon boxwood for florist bouquets; craft supplies like pinecones, bark, twigs and animal bones and antlers for making into rustic crafts like antler buttons.

Other wildcrafters look for medicinal herbs for teas and tinctures, and in some cases for mysterious rituals, in others as herbal medicines.

The reason more people aren’t cashing in on the collection of natures free bounty?

• Wildcrafting is not an easy job, consisting of hours slogging through thick bush in hot conditions, or alternately, in cold conditions – sometimes with heavy, wet, odoriferous and perishable harvest carried on your back.

• You have to be able to time your trip exactly to get the ripest, most perfect, in demand products.

• You need to be able to recognize them, and correctly identify them.

• You have to have a market for the product immediately - many of these wildcrafted items have a short shelf life.

• It’s not a steady income stream – some seasons will be quite lucrative, but there will also be lean times too. It helps to have several methods of making money, and use wildcrafting on the side to make a seasonal income.

In many places the native people and other wildcrafters keep an eye on the weather, and based on their knowledge of the seasons, the way the wild plants grow, and other factors they know exactly the right time to collect the mushrooms, or find the right growth stage of fiddle head ferns.

The window of opportunity to getting the best harvest is slim, and knowing where to find the crop is only the first stage.

The logistics of getting the harvest collected is next, and then how to quickly transport any perishable wildcrafted items to market, and then sell it. In some cases, such as in remote areas of British Columbia where mushrooms are gathered, a small plane will be standing by at a staging area to take the gathered harvest to major centers for sale.

A Dutch auction is one place to sell these products, where florists can make great deals on very fresh flowers and other items for their bouquets as well as interesting seed pods and craft supplies.

Woody cuts - the branches of various coloured shrubs such as Cornus stolonifera, the red twig dogwood, will be sold by weight, not per piece.

Fir boughs and other evergreens sell well late in the fall for making into Christmas wreaths and other decorations.

The amount of goods that go through this type of auction in Surrey in British Columbia is astounding.

Wildcrafting is not for everyone, but for those that choose this alternate lifestyle it can be extremely rewarding.

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