The Honorable Harvest

A session that begins sitting down with a book and ends with people standing in front of a plant, genuinely unsure whether they are allowed to pick it.

How it runs

1. Read aloud, outdoors, ten minutes. The passage listing the guidelines of the honorable harvest: never take the first, never take the last, ask permission and abide by the answer, take only what you need, use it respectfully, share, give thanks, give a gift in reciprocity, sustain the ones who sustain you.
2. Write them up where everyone can see them for the rest of the walk.
3. Walk, with one rule: you must ask, and you must be prepared to be told no. Asking is not a metaphor — stand in front of the plant, look at the whole population of it, and decide. Some people will come back with empty baskets. That is a result, not a failure.
4. Sit in a circle with the harvest and cook or eat some of it.
5. The reciprocity question: what did you give, or what will you?

Facilitator notes

• Identification safety comes first and separately. Run a straight, unromantic session on what is deadly in this landscape before any of this. Ethics does not protect anyone from hemlock.
• Check local foraging law and land ownership. In some places the honest answer to “may I take this” is “not legally”.
• The people who came back empty-handed are the most interesting voices in the closing circle. Ask them first.