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Thayer has seen his audience change over time. “Twenty years ago, a big part of my audience and people coming to my classes was fundamentalist Christians preparing for the collapse of civilization,” he says, a reaction to Y2K. “That demographic has almost totally disappeared from my classes.” Today, his “prototypical” attendee is slightly more than 50 percent likely to be female—often a rural or urban housewife between the ages of 35 and 60 who has a garden and likes to cook. But he sees a wide variety of backgrounds from the others, all of them tending toward middle class who are more likely to pay money for a workshop. Some are a bit leery of wild plants, especially their perceived risk of poisoning the eater, but Thayer dispels the myths. “Practically every person I know who is an avid bicyclist has been hospitalized.” Foraging, on the other hand, “is statistically so safe, when you actually look at it, it’s almost ridiculous. The big safety rule is: Don’t eat something unless you are positive what it is.” He jokes that no one fears that they are eating a deadly false blackberry. “You know what a blackberry is, so that means you are ready to eat it. All the plants we eat, all of them, are equally distinct. But you have to work to get to that point of familiarity, and you do that one plant at a time. Once you’re there, you have it for the rest of your life.”

“Here’s the thing that people don’t quite grasp about foraging: People imagine this food isn’t as good and that that’s why you can’t buy it at the store,” says Thayer. Thistle stalk tastes “like a honeydew melon but in the shape of a broccoli stalk.” Shelf life is two to three days; pick it a week late and it’s too tough. If someone “got asparagus and it was 4 feet high and it had already branched out and they grilled it, they aren’t going to think it’s delicious.” Learning the timing is also key.

Then, “once you start eating this stuff, you can’t imagine not eating it, because it’s literally the best stuff you’ve ever had.” •