The complete foraging and wildcrafting gift guide

Last Updated on November 15, 2019 by Susan von Frank

As avid foragers and wildcrafters, we understand that we can be tricky to gift shop for. When friends or family ask us what we want for a gift, it’s usually plants, shared experiences, or items to help us cook or process all the goodies we get from foraging or gardening.

If you’re trying to find the perfect gift for a forager or wildcrafter, we hope the list of foraging gift ideas below will help!

Foraging and wildcrafting gift guide

Our list of 40+ gift ideas for foragers and wildcrafters are not arranged in any particular order. The list also includes gifts in all price ranges, so you can find the perfect gift for a forager or wildcrafter regardless of your budget.

Let’s get started! Note: Click on any of the product links or images in this gift guide to learn more information about the product (current prices, color variations, etc).  

1. Foraging baskets and bags 

Whenever we’re out foraging, we either bring our woven foraging basket or foraging bags (or both). These items are lightweight and also allow the mushrooms we collect to “spore out” as we walk, helping them reproduce.

Our favorite foraging baskets and bags are:

a. African market basket (we also use this for garden harvests)
*We also bring a linen kitchen towel with our basket so we can cover the edible treasures inside, protecting them from sun and allowing them to keep longer: 
b. Mushroom foraging bag (no, morel mushrooms are not included)

c. Organic cotton drawstring bags (also great for a trip to the farmers market)

2. Foraging knife.

Cutting and quickly cleaning wild-foraged foods (like mushrooms) saves a lot of time and aggravation when you get back to the kitchen. One of our morel mushroom hunting friends showed off this foraging knife + brush combo to us last spring and we swooned: 

3. Foraging and wildcrafting books 

No matter how long you’ve been foraging and wildcrafting, you can always learn more! Also, foraging is quite region-specific. What we forage here in the southeast (South Carolina) is very different than what we’d forage in other bioregions/states. 

So, having region-specific foraging guidebooks is essential! There are tons of great foraging and wildcrafting books to choose from. Recommendations: 

a. General and regional foraging guides  

Our absolute favorite general foraging guidebook is Samuel Thayer’s masterful The Forager’s Harvest: a Guide to Identifying, Harvesting, and Preparing Edible Wild Plants: 

Good regional foraging guides:

Northeast Foraging:

Midwest Foraging:

Southeast Foraging: 

Southwest Foraging: 

California Foraging: 

Pacific northwest foraging:  

Foraging the Rocky Mountains:

Wild edible plants of Texas: 

Sonoran Desert Food Plants:

Marine foraging, freediving for food (this makes us wish we lived near the ocean!)  

b. Backyard foraging. Foraging doesn’t have to involve grand adventures into the wilderness. You can just walk out your front door.

We’ve written an article about 16 common edible weeds that are probably growing in your yard. Here’s a book (Backyard Foraging) that takes things a bit further: 

c. Foraging mushrooms. Foraging mushrooms requires an eye for detail and taking necessary safety precautions. Two books to help: 

Mushrooming without fear: the beginner’s guide to collecting safe and delicious mushrooms: 

The Complete Mushroom Hunter: Illustrated guide to foraging, harvesting, and enjoying wild mushrooms (includes home mushroom cultivation info as well):  

d. Family foraging. As (almost) new parents, we can’t wait to teach our son all about foraging and the outdoors. A kid-friendly book (with kid-friendly recipes) that can help you or a gift recipient with children enter the world of foraging is Family Foraging: a fun guide to gathering and eating wild plants:  

e. Foraging cookbooks. What good is a pile of foraged food if you don’t know how to turn it into delicious foods and beverages? Here are three foraging cookbooks that we highly recommend:

Acorns & cattails: a modern foraging cookbook of forest, farm, and field:

Forage, Harvest, Feast: a wild-inspired cuisine:

The wildcrafting brewer: creating unique drinks and boozy concoctions from nature’s ingredients: 

f. Books for the philosopher-forager who enjoys history, anthropology, and sociology:

The lifeways of hunter-gatherers: the foraging spectrum:  

Affluence without abundance: what we can learn from the world’s most successful civilizations: 

4. Foraging clothes

These clothing items are perfect for foragers:  

a. Women’s wide brim sun hat: 

b. Men’s cotton mesh hat: 

c. All rubber Kamik women’s waterproof rain boots (The Tyrant LOVES her Kamik boots): 

d. Foraging tees: 

I will find you morel mushroom tee: 

Morel mushroom vintage tee: 

Wild mushroom tee with different species: 
Foraging is my happy place (true statement) baseball tee:

5. Something different (and highly social)

Instead of a board game where you try to crush your enemies to death to win, how about a game where you cooperate with your fellow players and win by learning to ID wild edible plants together? Wildcraft: an herbal adventure game, is a highly rated game from LearningHerbs.com:

6. Mushroom and foraging journal 

We always make notes after a day foraging. Date, location, conditions, what we found, observations, etc. All this info goes into our mushroom and foraging journal and we reference these notes in future years. This helps us hone our foraging instincts and provides a useful future reference when we’re planning a foraging adventure. 

Here’s a good foraging journal for the forager/mushroom hunter in your life: 

7. Gifts for the forager’s kitchen 

a. Food dehydrator

When you find a 20 pound maitake or baskets full of morels, a quality dehydrator comes in handy. Between foraging and gardening, our 9-tray Excalibur dehydrator has been on more often than off over the past decade… And it still works as well as it did on day 1!  

b. Fermenter 

All of SS Brewtech’s fermentation equipment is top notch. Our 3.5 gallon mini brew bucket fermenter is currently bubbling away with a wild pear and garden pumpkin cider that we’ll be bottling soon. Earlier, it was home to elderberry wine and pumpkin champagne. 

If the forager you’re shopping for loves making their own homemade adult beverages/ferments, they’ll love this gift!

c. Shun kitchen knives 

We don’t give each other many material gifts, but when we do, we make them count. Usually, our gifts are something we really need and will last a lifetime. Case in point: a few years back we bought each other a set of absolutely stunning Shun kitchen knives for Christmas. These hammered steel Japanese knives aren’t just gorgeous works of art, they’re extraordinarily functional in the kitchen (a place where we spend a lot of time together). 

If you only get one, we recommend a Shun chef’s knife: 

d. Home distiller

Yeah, we live in the south where moonshine was once a way of life. For the record, when we’re not pregnant, we might have a drink every night or two. So we’re not advocating for people to abuse the stuff. 

For foragers that want to take their mixed drinks to the next level with wild ingredients, a home distiller will make an awesome gift. 

Option 1: 3 gallon Trulystep home distiller. We have a still very similar to this stainless steel version. Our condenser is copper (for the reasons mentioned below), but the mash pot is not. It’s one of the most unique presents we’ve ever been gifted (thanks Lisa & Rob!), but we’ve yet to use it. It’s on the goal list for the coming year though. We can’t wait!