Piper Brighton, '15

February 19, 2015
Senior interned with forager to help achieve more sustainable food practices

By Anna Allen, '16

For as long as she can remember, Piper Brighton, ’15, has been interested in the food industry and working toward more sustainable food — food that is local, organic, and native to the environment. 

Brighton, an environmental studies major and geography minor, was able to put her passion into practice last summer as an intern with Meadows and More through the Spider Internship Fund. Under the guidance of the program’s founder, Tama Matsuoka, she worked in northern New Jersey and Long Island foraging, or gathering, wild berries. “If you have ever been berry picking, you have been foraging,” says Brighton.

However, Brighton says that the mission of Meadows and More is a bit different than picking a pint of strawberries. Matsuoka aims to forage invasive species, as opposed to native species, as native species help the environment stay healthy and balanced. “We want to keep native species because they’re good for the environment and they help maintain biodiversity, and the natural ecology of the area,” says Brighton. The team picked many wine berries, an invasive species resembling a raspberry.

Brighton’s first experience in the field wasn’t exactly what she pictured. “When I first started my internship, I thought we were going to be foraging in the plot of all these weeds. But when I looked closer, I realized there was an entire community of plants, and at least five different types of plants growing there,” says Brighton. This type of biodiversity differs significantly from more traditional practices of farming, where plots are filled with rows of the same crop.

“We’d get purslane, carpetweed, amaranth, everything, really. And they all thrived together in a community,” says Brighton.

Observing different plants flourishing together in a natural community caused Brighton to rethink farming. “We need to farm in order to eat,” she says. “But it’s still a forced monoculture. With foraging, it’s more sustainable and we’re able to use what we have, instead of working against the land.”

But working with the land takes time. “We would be on the plot for seven hours or so, but it would go so quickly and we’d be talking and it’s extremely meditative,” says Brighton.

Although the team was foraging invasive species, they did not just toss what they picked. Instead, they would process the food. “If we picked berries, we’d have to take out any stems or leaves, or bugs, so we could package them accordingly,” she says.

While tedious, packaging their product was well worth the effort; the team was able to deliver their food to six restaurants in the surrounding areas. The team kept the food they had foraged in a cooler, and Brighton hand delivered the food to each chef. “I got to meet all of these awesome chefs,” she says, “and they love our products, because it makes them unique. A lot of the time, they hadn’t worked with the food we foraged, so it was creatively stimulating for them.”

“Part of what makes Tama’s business special is that she’s foraging from places that aren’t near roadsides or treated with pesticides or herbicides — really remote landscapes that aren’t touched,” says Brighton. This type of foraging yields cleaner food. “There are a lot of foragers out there who don’t use those practices and that just defeats the purpose,” she says.

Not only did Brighton improve the environment and learn more about ecological systems and biodiversity on the job, she was also able to exercise critical evaluation of agriculture practices — a complex skill she has cultivated over the past four years at Richmond. “I enjoyed working with Tama so much, because we weren’t practicing standard picking and farming. We were taking what was there, instead of forcing something on the land,” she says.

“It’s incredible how something so small as foraging can make a huge impact on the food industry.”