Set in a mysterious land with fictional but realistic people, animals, and plants, it’s a fun and thought provoking action and adventure story that is sort of a cross between Indiana Jones and the Never Ending Story. You might say it’s also like Harry Potter meets Willow meets the Emerald Forest.

One of my main inspirations for writing it was the idea that what if there was more land out there somewhere, not in outer space, but something more accessible. What if all the land had not already been discovered? To me that just lights up the imagination, especially from the angle of different plants, animals, food, and the people and how they interact with these ecologies.

I know a lot of my foraging and permaculture fans don’t read fiction, but I implore you to try this one.

Why Grow Unusual Things?  Eating new things is not only fun, but very important for food security!

Here are the 3 primary reasons: 

Nutrition:  Some of the foods we choose to grow are superior in nutrition and medicinal benefits to more common fruits, vegetables, and herbs.  These include elderberries, Egyptian spinach, stinging nettles, tulsi (holy basil), cilantro, kale and collards, okra, jujubes, aronia berries, paw paws, goumi berries, rose hips, purple sweet potatoes, blueberries, maypop passionfruit.

Fun and Interesting Flavors:  Some that come to mind are papalo (Kevin’s favorite herb), hoja santa, huacatay, aji amarillo peppers, tulsi (Kevin’s favorite ice cream flavor), BBQ berries, and paw paws (George Washington’s favorite dessert.)

Food Security and Healthy Environments.   Our food system is precarious due to many factors that is a rabbit hole of a subject that could be a volume of books. On a basic level, our narrow range of crops that we grow to feed ourselves are highly inbreed, weak, and vulnerable to disease, pests, and climate related crop failures. The solution that Kevin has been promoting for 20 years is to diversify what we grow and what we eat.

This can be someting that is botanically unrelated to anything else we eat, plants that have resilience not only because they haven’t been weakened by modern breeding and selection, but because they are in different plant families than any other crop, thus less vulnerable to the same pests and diseases.  These crops are often tougher and more resilent, and require less inputs to grow, which creates a more sustainable and secure food system.  Many of these plants attract pollinators, and provide habitat for native species.

  On the hand, taking more “normal” crops and trying to re-wild and rejuvenate them is another approach that Kevin is more and more getting into. This is the concept of not only saving seeds of heirloom and other less common varieites, but participating in something called landrace farming.  This is the concept of allowing plants to cross and hybridize naturally, and saving the ones that thrive under local conditions. Over a few generations, the seeds become more genetically rich and diverse, and are thus able to adapt to local conditions. Requiring less inputs and no sprays or pest control necessary. And how cool is it that they become and expression of the land itself!  

Some of Kevin’s Favorite Plants He Grows: 

Tulsi — also known as Holy Basil, this plant is renowned for its health benefits and anti-inflammatory properties. Look up the health benefits of tulsi and you’ll find them to be numerous.  This summer annual plant is very resilient — so gets the food security checkmark.  It is also delicious, Kevin’s favorite ice cream flavor, that he and his family use to make smoothies all summer long. Also makes delicious ice tea. So tulsi gets all the check marks! Flowers also attract bees and pollintaors. 

Papalo — This herb from Mexico and Central America was used for thousands of years like cilantro is often used today. But unlike cilantro, it loves summer heat and grows at the same time tomatoes, peppers, and other summer foods are available. The flavor is totally unique, and is Kevin’s family’s favorite herb, that is used fresh in tacos, salsa, and as a pizza topping in his household all summer long (and into the fall a bit.)

It is easy to grow and resilient so it gets the food security check mark as well. It is also possibly super nutritous (not a lot of research on this.)

Maypop Passionfruit:  This is Tennessee’s state wildflower. It is very reslient, and attracts myriad native pollinators and the like. It is also absolutely beautifu.  The fruits are passionfruit, and their juice is tropical tasting deliciousness!  And unlike other passionfruit species that are tropical, maypop has edible and medicinal leaves and flowers with a unique flavor and renowned for it’s health benefits, particularly concerning relaxation and improved sleep. 

Egyptian Spinach:  In the summer heat, all of the traditional greens don’t fare so well.  Lettuce, kale, collards, spinah, and chard. However, Eygptian spinach is the okra family and loves summer heat. It’s leaves are mild in flavor but superior in nutrition.  

Jujube: These amazing fruits grow on trees that are not only drought tolerant and disease resistant (they are unrleated to any other food crop) but also late to leaf out in the spring and early to go dormant in the fall, making them less susceptible to crop failures due to weather fluctuations.  They are also superior in nutrition to most other fruits, and besides rose hips, by far the highest source of vitamin C you can grow in a non tropical climate.  They also dry and store very well  making them a great food security plant.  — (at that point they taste like apple pie filling “nouget”) 

Purple Sweet Potatoes (and sweet potatoes in general):  That purple color means extra nutrition, (check that box), the flavor is different that other sweet potatoes (to Kevin they often taste like brownies but not super sweet), and they get an high score in the food security category as well. Sweet potatoes are a staple crop —  they grow well with not too many pests or diseases, and produce lots of calories.  We could essentially live on sweet potatoes, and Kevin’s number one food security crop by far.  And the greens are also edible and nutritious!   The only thing about then is that they are propogated asexually from cutting/clones “slips” from the tubers themselves. What this means is that each plant is genertically identical, thus prone to disease related failures. That is why Kevin has started planting true sweet potato seeds and will continue to select new varieties primarly based on their ability to set seed. This will hopefully lead to more resilience in sweet potatoes.  

Aronia: Aronia is a resilient shrub that produces copious amounts of extremely high antioxidant berries — way higher than blueberries and pomegranates. They dry and store very well and although outright the flavor is at the same time both incredible and mouth puckering/astringent and a little gritty, when blended in a smoothie with other sweet fruit imparts a rich almost chocolate like flavor (and of course all the nutrition!)

Elderberries: Elderberries are becoming famous for their superious nutrition and health benefits. They also are very fast growing and resilient to most pests and diseases as they are unrleated to other food crops. They also attract native pollinators and other beneficial species.  Kevin is happy to be partnering with Tony at Blue Honey Farms where there is an elderberry orchard they are working on together. 

Kevin has been known as Feral Kevin in social media for years, and is on YouTube and Instagram. His farm in California was Feijoa Farms, now renamed Vicky May Farms, after his mother.

Collaboration with Blue Honey Farms in Eagleville, TN. Tony and Joy run Blue Honey Farms, which has been primarily a blueberry farm for over a decade, just outside of Nashville. Kevin and Tony have been collaborating on growing some unusual fruits. This year, after a warm winter with early blooming followed by a freeze, the majority of the blueberry crop was lost for the season. God often works in mysterious ways, so a new direction and partnership was born out of what seemed to be a disaster. At Blue Honey, a variety of crops have been introduced besides blueberries as well as a variety of growing strategies. There is nearly an acre of elderberries planted and this year should be the first harvest! You can visit both Tony and Kevin at the Franklin Farmer’s Market on Saturday.

How we farm:  We are non-certified organic, we don’t use any chemicals ever, and focus on growing using ecologically regenerative practice, providing habitat for pollinators, and building the soil food web. 

Learn about our unusual food crops and why we grow them!

$50 per person (kids under 12 are free if they are accompanied by a paid adult)

Join me for the last foraging class until spring on an amazing piece of land just south of Nashville. We will be learning about various wild plants growing on the property, the ins and outs of foraging, and there are wild trifoliate oranges growing on the property! Take some home! There might be some mushrooms as well depending on the rain.

For payment information, email me at feralkevin@gmail.com

Tulsi is also known as Holy Basil, and is widely grown in India and other parts of Asia. It is considered a sacred plant there, and it renowned for its healthful and medicinal purposes. It has been recently popularized by health afficionados in western countries as a healthful tea. Organic India is company that sells tulsi tea.

The variety we grow is called Kapoor, and in our opinion has the best flavor of all the tulsi varieties we have tried.

We love the smell of the tulsi we grow, with hints of bubblegum (or something) that led us to the following miraculous recipe that changed our culinary lives!

In a blender (Vitamix) add:

1. At least one giant handful of tulsi — leaves, flowers, and stems (so long as they aren’t too woody).
2. Vanilla ice cream (like 3 small servings worth)
3. Frozen blueberries (1 to 1.5 cups)
4. Enough milk for it to blend and be a thick milkshake

This is one of the best tasting deserts I have ever eaten. (And minus the sugar, super healthy.) Its flavor is so unique, one can only describe it as such. “Imagine you never had anything with vanilla or anything with chocolate, and try to describe those flavors.”

Sunday June 13, Franklin, TN 10 AM — Noon

Sunday June 27, Franklin, TN 10AM-Noon

Just email me at feralkevin (at ) gmail (dot) com

Closely related to garlic and onions, the 3 cornered leek (Allium triquetrum) is from the Mediterranean region of the world, and was introduced to California by European settlers. It now grows wild all over the Bay Area, typically in human disturbed landscapes — lawns, gardens, and in urban and suburban landscaping. Most consider it a weed! Despite the fact that it is delicious and attractive. I use the very mild greens like chives or green onions (but I like them more!) and the beautiful white flowers I add to salads and on top of soups. The flowers are much stronger in flavor than the greens. The bulbs are also delicious, especially cooked, where they can become almost creamy. They take several years to get golf ball sized as best, so I typically reserve the bulbs for special occasions or when I have access to a giant overgrown patch.

Their season is basically our rainy season, October until May. They die off in the summer and disappear from the landscape until fall, when new green growth emerges from their dormant bulbs. Flowers are typically available in April.

Be sure to enjoy some this season!

A Novel

by Kevin Feinstein (August 2017)

Matthew Falco wants to heal the planet by growing his garden. Real estate being at a premium, he purchases land far out in the rugged and beautiful wilderness. He sets out with the intention of thriving on the land, but the struggles he encounters test his very will to survive.

The tale follows Falco as he rehabilitates the land, forages for wild plants and mushrooms, hunts wild game, and faces his biggest challenge — the loneliness of his own mind. Enter the wild, full of beauty and danger, where Falco strives to find his role in the world of society and his place in nature.

“In The Primitive Gardener, [Kevin Feinstein] candidly shares his rich knowledge of living with nature, foraging, and food growing to weave an amazing fictional adventure that in many ways is more of a how-to guide than his preceding non-fictional endeavors The Bay Area Forager and Practically Wild.”