Tancy Rooffener, Human Health and Psychology student at Emory University

Taking daily walks in my rural, secluded neighborhood has become somewhat of a ritual for my mom and me during the quarantine. On the walks, we breathe fresh air and talk about our life plans with each other. Since we treasure this time with one another we have started walking a bit slower and noticing the natural world around ourselves. Just the other day I exclaimed to my mom that the branch of a tree we pass by daily looks like a rhinoceros head. While I was busy seeing animal faces in trees, my mother found something of value and nutritious on the ground. She pointed down to the grass along the path that we often walk on and said that the green stem coming from the dirt looked like wild garlic. Surely enough when we bent down and pulled it out of the ground, there was a tiny bulb of garlic at the root. As we observed the grassy area, we realized that there was a great deal of wild garlic growing in the area but it just looked like tall grass to the ordinary eye. We quickly went back home to fetch a basket to gather the garlic.

I felt like quite the sustainable ethno botanist as we picked the garlic. Is this what old-timers mean when they talk about “living off the land?” I chuckled to myself after having the thought. Picking the garlic reminded me of a guest lecture at college where an ethno botanist visited our class and discussed the healing benefits of many plants. She quoted Hippocrates and said we should “let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.”

Although we eat garlic quite often at home I was curious about the benefits of wild garlic and decided to do a little research. It turns out that wild garlic leaves contain loads of vitamin C and beta-carotene. Wild garlic protects the heart and even purifies the blood. I learned that it also cleanses and improves digestion, which is helpful for skin problems and improving the immune system. The plants also release a chemical called allicin that could combat the cold or flu. Reading this made me think about the power of the food we consume as humans and that simple foods like garlic contain properties that could benefit one’s body during a global pandemic. When we returned home my mom cleaned the garlic and prepared to use it in her homemade garlic bread. I felt like an amateur forager and felt closer to the food I consumed. The joy that comes from handpicking one’s food is immeasurable. More importantly it makes a person see the value of knowing exactly where their food comes from. The wild garlic we found by chance today made me wish that I could handpick all the food in my life.