Oh, I wish I had the time to forage personally these days. Fortunately I have the problem of a rapidly growing business that needs my attention like a growing toddler, but the downside of that is I don't get out to the woods and fields like I used to. It's something dear to me and something I hope to get back to doing regularly when I've set the restaurant up so that I can step away more often. I grew up literally "in the woods" in the rolling hills of Southern Indiana near the Kentucky border, and my "yard" was miles of forest where we kids would play our games and interact with the wildlife, finding and playing with frogs, turtles, all manner of insects and salamanders, you name it. When we grew old enough we got to go on mushroom hunts, forage walnuts and hickory nuts and pawpaws and persimmons, and eventually to go on hunts for deer, rabbit or squirrel. As I grew older and became independent after college, my interest in foraging grew and I was able to find reliable spots for morels, hen of the woods, chicken of the woods, nettles, ramps, wood sorrel, pawpaws, wild oregano, and wild strawberries on tracts in the Hoosier National and Morgan Monroe forests from Monroe and Brown counties and a few spots down on the Ohio river. Once while visiting a cousin who lives in Crawford county, my cousin took me to his reliable spot for wild ginseng, and he let me dig a root. That was a trip because it's increasingly rare but my cousin found this little spot in a vast woods where a few plants were growing and he wildcrafted them into a larger stand he could harvest sustainably. So, while I won't be foraging myself this spring, it's something for my daydreams and it's definitely in my future.