Today we’d like to introduce you to Mark “Merriwether” Vorderbruggen.
Mark, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
In 2005, I started a blog detailing all the great (and not so great) hiking, camping, canoe/kayaking, fishing, and other outdoor adventure locations around Houston. However, the most popular part of these reviews were the information on the edible and medicinal plants I was finding. In 2008, the Houston Arboretum asked me to teach a foraging class which turned out to be wildly popular. To help the students learn outside of class www.foragingtexas.com was created to document all the wonderfully useful plants Texas has to offer. Eleven years later is contains detailed information on over 225 edible and/or medicinal plants with another 150 waiting to be added. Also, during those years, I expanded out to cover and teach foraging all across Texas. This has led to writing books, magazine articles, appearing on TV, radio, and numerous speaking engagements. Its been a strange and wonderful growth!
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Smooth road? Struggles? What odd questions. When you are doing what you are supposed to do, what you were put on this planet to do, those terms lose meaning.
Please tell us about Foraging Texas.
The true specialty of Foraging Texas is bringing the science, the chemistry, the biology to the field of wild edible and herbal medicine instruction…and I’m told I’m quite funny, too! My “real” job is a chemist, having a MS in medicinal chemistry and a Ph.D. in physical organic chemistry. This give me a deeper understanding of what the plants are doing and how best to bring out their special abilities.
Any shoutouts? Who else deserves credit in this story – who has played a meaningful role?
So many people! First and foremost, my parents who started introducing me to the bounty of nature’s food before I could even walk! The writings of earlier foragers such as Euell Gibbons, Carmen Stahl, and T.R. Zimmerman. In more modern times Samuel Thayer, Green Deane, Ellen Zachos, Charles W. Kane, John Slattery, Pascal Baudar, and many I’m terrified I’m forgetting. They all taught me so that I could then teach others. Also, places like the Houston Arboretum, Caddo Mounds Historic Site, Vista Brewing, Washington-on-the-Brazos, Spring Creek Greenway, San Felipe de Austin Historic Site, Museum of the Coastal Bend, and many more have opened their land to me to reach people to that land, showing them the great gifts God had placed there.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.foragingtexas.com
- Email: merriwether@foragingtexas.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/merriwetherforager/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ForagingTexas/
- Other: https://www.youtube.com/user/drmerriwether
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