- We stumbled upon some willow h They like to be by the water, and it has salicin, which is a medicinal compound.

If you scratch the stem and you can lick it.

(bright upbeat music) (laughs) I feel like an animal r (bright upbeat music continues) Today, on "Geronimo Eats the Bay we are here with John Mills, the founder of Watch Duty, the wildfire tracking platform.

We are out here on his ranch in Healdsburg, and today, we're going to find out how he manages the land and see what we can forage on hi Ready to go forage?

- Let's do it.

- Let's go.

(bright upbeat music) I see some blackberry over there These are nice big ones.

- These ones look pretty good.

- Oh, perfect, thank you.

Sorry, my hands are blue already Nice and plump.

(John hums) So now, they're sweet.

I've been eating a bunch of sour ones lately.

These are invasive.

All the seeds live in the berrie so that's what you want to take so they don't spread like crazy.

So just eat them.

(bright upbeat music continues) - Pretty good.

- What was the moment when you k that Watch Duty had to go from a to something you had to build?

- I mean, the Walbridge Fire was the really big one.

Frankly, it was a 50,000 acre fire that, you know, burned all this area.

When you first get the evacuatio it's usually after the fire's es so you kind of smell smoke in th and you don't really necessarily what's happening at the time.

And so I was up day and night for seven days just digging through the internet.

- Yeah.

- Listening to police scanners, fire service radios, and then I ultimately stumbled a radio folks on the internet who were doing what I was doing.

That really inspired me of all these people who were acting in the interest of their community and not of themselves.

But trying to modify the current system was not going to work.

After the fire ended, I came back to my property and then I just started to dig into the problem.

I found an opportunity for us to go build a system outside of theirs.

- I think I see over there, there's some beaked hazelnuts.

- [John] There's the poison oak.

- There is poison oak too.

- A lot of it, yeah.

- Got to be- - I'm immune, so- - Oh, perfect.

- Theresthat.

I'm very blessed to be able to have that.

Here's one.

- [Geronimo] There we go, thank They're fuzzy.

- Yeah, they're kind of spiky, f Look, it's like fiberglass.

- [Geronimo] How are you going to bite into that?

- [John] Feel that.

- I do hope it's worth the taste You've mentioned living with the land, not on it.

What does that mean day to day here for you?

- Fire is one of the elements that, you know, has been on this landscape before humans were here.

The Native Americans, the Pomo Indians would live here.

They would use fire as a tool to actually clear the land- - Yeah.

- Out of all this underbrush.

But, you know, trying to fight the elements, you're not going to win.

I use prescribed fire on this la - Yeah.

- I thin my forest, I take care of my trees.

You know, I live at the edge of nowhere out here and we also rely on infrastructu that's built for and paid for by taxpayers.

PBS in particular also provides emergency alerting infrastructur PBS WARN is a website that collaborates with FCC and all the wireless emergency a And so actually Watch Duty is co mining that website every five s Without PBS, wed definitely have less intelligence than we have.

(Geronimo hums) - So I can see we have California mugwort here.

Koreans have this in their cuisine, mugwort.

It has a good smell to it.

It smells very sweet.

You could eat it raw, but it's much more pleasant after it's cooked.

- This right here is sticky will Apparently it is good for the lymphatic system here.

It's sticky like Velcro.

- See, sticky willy, not a wet w - Nope.

(Geronimo and staff laugh) (bright gentle music) - So we've got our foraged finds and you can see we're going to go and taste them one at a time.

So the first thing we have here is the beaked hazelnut.

You got to peel it first to kind of get to the nut.

- [Crew] Oh, John's already got - Just crack the shell.

Just hope it doesn't slip into my throat.

(laughs) - How about I crack it with a ro Let's see what happens here.

Let's see if we can crack this thing open, huh?

(rock thuds) (glass shatter) - Oh, there you go.

- I think I damaged the goods.

That looks like the goods though First time eating one of these on the property before.

- Tastes like hazelnut.

- Those are pretty good.

- [Geronimo] Yeah, one, two.

(rock thuds) - It's open.

- Okay, bon appetit.

(Geronimo hums) Whoa, I like this.

- It's good, right?

- Yeah.

- [John] I'm quite surprised.

All right, what else we got?

- With this like size and shape and like plumpness, it's pretty ripe.

(bright gentle music) Should we do the mugwort?

I guess just a little bite.

Usually you cook it, process it but you can also eat it raw, but it's going to be a bit bitte - Okay, see what we think here.

(bright gentle music continues) It's very bitter.

(Geronimo laughs) Ugh, it gets worse as you keep chewing it.

(Geronimo laughs) (bright gentle music continues) - Oh, it starts nice and then it turns into medicine.

- Yeah.

- Ugh, God.

(John laughs) It's not joyful eating.

(laughs) That silly sticky willy.

- Yeah, sticky willy.

Doesn't smell like anything.

Tastes like grass to me.

- Very just vegetal.

- Yeah.

- But good for your... - Lymph nodes, right?

- Lymphatic system, helping with inflammation, so if you feel bloated.

I think that's it, huh?

- That's our haul.

- All right, that's a wrap for today.

Thank you so much, John, for having us on your property.

Where can people learn more about Watch Duty and what you're doing on your la - Watchduty.org is the best plac to find information about Watch and then you can download the apps for free and hopefully, this was insightf I learned a lot, I know that.

- Awesome, thank you so much for watching "Geronimo Eats the I'm Geronimo Ramos for NorCal Public Media, and I'll see you in the next one (bright upbeat music) Hi, everyone, Geronimo here.

This show is supported by public media viewers like you.

If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to like and subscribe and consider donating to NorCal Public Media so we can keep making quality co and I can continue eating the ba Visit norcalpublicmedia.org/dona and I'll see you out there.

(bright upbeat music continues)