Meet the full-time forager filling local restaurants' mushrooming demand for wild food

Forager Shawn Dawson has a nutritioussolution for gardeners fighting weedseat them.

Dandelion greens can beused in salads, and Dawson gathers the weed's blossomsfor a local brewery making a dandelion India pale ale.

His other favouritesinclude the dreaded Japanese knotweed. The plant alsoknown as "mile-a-minute" can ruin a garden and destroy a home's foundation, but Dawson says it's delicious.

"It's a pretty hated plant but I've learned to love it," said Dawson, who cooks withthe plant's spring shoots, before theygets too fibrous.

• Destructive Japanese Knotweed sprouting in Canada. Brace yourself.

Knotweedis just one of dozens of plants and mushrooms Dawson has used to turnhis passion for wild food into a full-time job.

But it's not just weeds he's gathering, Dawson has recently found one of the world's more desired mushroom near St. John's: the morel, a fungusthat isn't believed to grow naturally on the Avalon Peninsula.

Dawson won't say where he found them but he did say they were in a garden. He says they may have been brought to the Avalon in some mulch brought in from western Newfoundland, where morels are found.

"Needless to say I was pretty excited when I found them. When I was messaged a picture of these, I dropped everything. Gone. I've been waiting my whole life to find these," he said.

Local food revolution

The growing movement towardseating locally foraged and produced foods has been led by Newfoundland chefs like Jeremy Charles of Raymonds.

• St. John's to host top chefs from across North America

Dawson is an important part of that movement. When chefs like Charles orTodd Perrinof Mallard Cottagesay they are using local produce, there's a good chance they got it from Dawson.

I won't burn out. I'm doing what I love.- Shawn Dawson

In fact, Dawson says demand from St. John's area restaurantsis keeping him extremely busy.

"[I work] from sunup to sundown usually and then I have the farmers' market on Saturdays and foraging tours on Sunday," he said.

"All day, every day, I would say."

It's idyllic on sweet, sunny, summer days but when he has many orders to fill Dawson has been known to forage in driving rain and wind.

Foraging seasons

Duringthe spring, Dawson forages for emerging plants like river mint. Later, there are summer plants to harvest and in the late summer and fall months, Dawson transitions into serious mushroom foraging for species such aschanterelles, boletes and hedgehogs.

His own company is called the Barking Kettle, and he operates foraging tours out of the Murray Garden Centre in Portugal Cove, and he can be found on Instagram: flossmandandycabbage

"I won't burn out. I'm doing what I love," he said.

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