Southerners: Start Harvesting Clean Food and Natural Medicine From Wild Plants Growing Around Your Home In This Comprehensive Online Course!
Increase Your Self-Sufficiency and Learn How to Turn Common Backyard Plants Into Delicious Food Sources and Potent Medicines...
The Southern Forest Is Like a Grocery Store Where Everything Is Free, You Just Have To Learn How To Read The Labels...
Hello! My name is Matthew Hunter, founder of Legacy Wilderness Academy.
You’ve found your way to this page because you want to increase your knowledge of edible and medicinal plants, and I want to thank you for visiting!
I‘d like to take this opportunity to tell you about my Southerner's Guide to Foraging online course to help you decide if it’s a good option for you!
But first, a little about me so you know who’s writing to you!
My journey into foraging started when I was about 18 years old. I was very interested in learning which plants I could use to live off the land and feed my family in the event of an economic crash, disaster, or emergency off-grid situation.
During my research I quickly began to realize the immense value that wild plants have to offer.
Southerners are surrounded by a vast array of resources that can not only provide us with survival rations and emergency medicine in hard times, but also tasty fruits and vegetables that are packed full of nutrients, completely free from pesticides and preservatives, abundant, and free for the taking.
Back in 2021 I had the opportunity to start teaching about foraging in an online setting, and despite some people's hesitation about learning foraging online, I have had amazing results with it.
I found out first hand that online training can be very effective at actually equipping people to harvest food and medicine from the plants around them, and have since moved to teaching about foraging full time.
Introducing: The Southerner's Guide to Foraging
Harvest the Wild Bounty of the Southern Fields, Forests, and Swamps
The Southerner's Guide to Foraging is a comprehensive online course designed to equip Southerners to harvest edible and medicinal plants in the Southeastern US.
Detailed lessons systematically walk the learner through everything they need to know to identify and prepare tasty fruits, nuts, and vegetables from their local area and craft potent herbal remedies right from home!
Students will receive a comprehensive “crash course” into the world of foraging covering topics like herbal medicine making, wild food preservation and preparation methods, plant identification, foraging safety, and much more!
Each lesson walks the learner step-by-step through the whole gathering process from field to kitchen so they know exactly how to identify and use each plant.
Students will also be encouraged to maintain 1-on-1 communication with me (the instructor), that way I can confirm that every plant you plan to use is identified correctly and you can have the confidence to forage without the fear of eating the wrong thing!
- Learn the best-tasting and most nutrient dense wild foods that you can find in your own backyard and favorite hiking trails.
- Discover which Southern plants have been used to treat common everyday ailments like joint pain and arthritis, cold and flu, poison ivy, allergies, hormone dysfunction, high blood pressure, and much more!
- Get equipped to identify, harvest, and prepare the most important calorie-rich staple foods for long term off-grid living and survival…
- Learn emergency medicinal plants in our region that you can rely on in hard times in the event higher medical care becomes unavailable....
- Sharpen your skills in plant identification and get 1-on-1 guidance from a qualified instructor so you can harvest new plants without the fear of getting it wrong!
Immediately Start Finding Dozens of New Edible Plants in Your Area That Are Cleaner, Fresher, and More Nutritious Than Anything You Can Buy at the Grocery Store!
Many people today are trying to move away from overly-processed foods that are often packed full of chemicals and artificial preservatives…
When you sign up for The Southerner's Guide to Foraging, I’ll teach you about our region’s best-tasting and most nutritious food plants so you can have access to clean, organic food that is packed full of vitamins and nutrients(and tasty, too!)
Wild plants are abundant, easy to find, and fun to harvest, and when you get really good at foraging you essentially gain access to a massive supply of free food for the rest of your life!
Learn How to Craft Homemade Herbal Medicines With Common Southern Plants
Over the past decade I’ve noticed a huge rising interest in natural plant medicine. Many people I talk to are trying to avoid pharmaceuticals unless absolutely necessary, and would much rather take something that grows right out of the ground.
In this course we’ll take a detailed look at native medicinal plants in the Southeast region. I’ll walk you step-by-step through the whole medicine making process so that you feel completely equipped to harvest the useful plants around you and make medicine all on your own!
I’ll walk you step-by-step through the detailed medicinal uses, and often suggest formulas of multiple different plants that tackle the same health issue from different angles.
We’ll look at remedies for arthritis and joint pain, IBS and gut health, chronic skin conditions, high blood pressure and blood sugar control, liver health, hormone regulation, and much more!
I Will Show You The Most Important Plants for Self-Sufficiency, Survival, and Long Term Off-Grid Living
Preparing for the threat of a serious economic crisis, supply chain cutoff, or other long-term emergency is currently on the minds of many Americans.
That’s why one of the primary goals of this course is to teach you how to identify, harvest, and prepare the most calorie-rich survival foods that can realistically provide for you and your family in the event of a disaster or emergency.
I picked these plants because they are most important for self-sufficiency and long term off-grid living, and I think every Southerner should be familiar with how to use them.
I'm also going to cover emergency medicinal plants that every Southerner has access to in their immediate area. This will ensure that you will always have access to medicine, even if supply lines are slowed down or temporarily cut off.
Many of these plants were used by Southerners during the Civil War when access to regular medical supplies was cut off, so they have a proven history of being used in hard times and post-disaster situations.
Master the Art of Separating Toxic Lookalikes From Delicious Edibles With My Step-by-Step Proven Framework That Will Take You From "Afraid of Getting It Wrong" To Seasoned Harvester
The #1 problem I hear from beginner foragers is that they’re afraid they’re going to poison themselves by eating the wrong thing…
Many people are intimidated by the idea of harvesting a completely new plant from the wild, cooking it up, and serving it for dinner,
So oftentimes they end up just avoiding foraging altogether…
Even if you aren’t directly afraid of poisoning yourself, most beginners struggle with identifying plants with 100% certainty, enough to have the confidence to actually pick the plant and cook it for supper…
A lot of people WANT to harvest edible plants, they just don’t trust themselves to get it right…
In the end, they miss out on a whole host of amazing resources and delicious treasures that they could be enjoying every single year completely for free! What a bummer!
That’s why one of the main goals in this course is to sharpen your plant identification skills and equip you with an intuitive, step-by-step process you can follow each time you harvest a new plant so that you’re 100% certain you haven’t mistaken it for a toxic lookalike...
With a little practice even the most similar looking plants can be told apart from potential poisonous lookalikes. In this course I'll teach you how to look, so you can say goodbye to the fear of getting it wrong for good!
I Will Help You With Identification, So There's Not a Shred of Doubt That You're Eating the Right Plant...
Even with the best resources and training, chances are you'll still want to have someone knowledgable around to bounce questions off of and help confirm your identifications.
That’s why when you sign up for The Southerner's Guide to Foraging I'll make myself available via email for you to ask as many questions as you want.
When you sign up for the course, you'll have direct 1-on-1 access to me so that you can send me pictures of the plants you’re finding, that way I can confirm that you identified correctly before you consume them, as well as help guide you on the specific ways to use them(including things like preparation and dosage if it’s a medicinal plant.)
In past courses I’ve had major success with this type of 1-on-1 instruction. When students are able to know with 100% certainty that they’ve accurately identified a plant, they’re able to learn much faster and have immediate confidence that what they’re about to eat isn’t going to poison them.
Beginners often say things like “I wish I had an expert standing over my shoulder when I’m out foraging”...
With The Southerner's Guide to Foraging, that can almost become a reality!
When you sign up, you’ll have a qualified foraging instructor who is at the ready, happy to answer every single question you have on your foraging journey!
I know it’s going to make a world of difference during your next few years of foraging!
Learn How To Recognize Key Resources In Our Region and Gain Access to an Abundant Supply of Nutritious Food and Medicine That Comes Back Year After Year
Create Tasty Dishes That Will Impress Even The Most Hardened Wild Food Skeptics (Including Your Spouse😉)
Learn the Skills Your Ancestors Relied On During Hard Times
Pass Those Skills Down to the Next Generation- They Might Need Them!
Topics Covered In This Course:
A Crash Course Into The World Of Wild Food
- Learn the step-by-step process I've used to safely consume over 300 plants from the wild.
- Foraging Safety: 4 easy rules for avoiding plants that have been contaminated with pesticides, herbicides, and other carcinogenic chemicals.
- Location, Location, Location: Where are the best places to forage, and where is it legal or illegal?
- Wild Food Resources: Get a list of the best books and free online resources for foraging in the Southern U.S.
Plant Identification for Beginners- How to Avoid ANY Poisonous Lookalike, No Matter How Closely It Resembles the Real Thing
- Botanical Terminology Made Simple: Daily 10-minute action steps to help you explore the big world of botany in “bite sized” chunks.
- Reading a Plant Description: 5 key questions to ask every time you approach a new plant (and how written descriptions reveal important details that pictures alone often leave out).
- Understanding Leaves: Parts of a leaf, types of leaves, leaf shape, arrangement, and margins (and why knowing the difference is essential for separating similar looking plants).
- Plant Identification Checklists: Homework sheets to help you sharpen your skills of plant identification, memorize important terms, and teach you “how to look” at plants so you can become confident in your identifications and forage without fear!
Medicinal Plants of the Southeast: Turning Your Foraged Finds Into Effective Home Remedies
- Herbal extracts: How to make simple plant tinctures that a beginner could figure out in minutes.
- Infusions and Decoctions: Standard amounts, directions, and dosages for making herbal teas.
- Herbal oils and salves: How to make herbal preparations for the skin.
- How to apply herbs directly to the lungs with nebulizer treatments.
Foraging In Lawns and Gardens
- Going Gourmet with Wild Garden Greens: Learn why the WEEDS growing in your yard are more nutritious than the vegetables growing in your neighbor's garden!
- Superfoods Hiding Underfoot: 5 widespread and easy-to-find weeds with powerful nutritional benefits.
- A common edible weed that was discovered to be higher in omega 3 fatty acids than any other vegetable.
- Wild Ground Cherry: The wild “cherry tomato” that you won’t want to pull from your garden this year.
Foraging From Beginner to Advanced
- Acorns: Harvesting and preparing America’s top wild staple food(including my wife’s recipes for acorn flour cake and elderberry frosting).
- America’s Original Root Beer Tree: Why it was outlawed for sale, (why it never should have been), and how to make homemade root beer the old fashioned way.
- Poke Salad: America’s most misunderstood wild green.
Tasty Foods From Shrubs and Trees
- America’s Caffeine Tree: How a strange-sounding scientific name made America’s only caffeinated tea plant go out of fashion(even though it tastes wonderful)…
- Our Very Own Native Passionfruit Vine: A tropical flavor in a not-so-tropical region.
- Southern Wild “Lemonade”: How to make a tasty sour drink from a common shrub you’ve walked by a hundred times.
- And a handful of other edible and medicinal trees, shrubs, and vines…
Living Off The Land With Wild Plants
- Learn the high-calorie survival foods that can REALISTICALLY feed you if an emergency strikes.
- Discover 4 key strategies for living off the land with wild plants.
- Learn which plants Native Americans in the Southeast used to survive during hard times and famine.
What's Included In This Course:
A Detailed Video Library With High Quality Lessons Covering Plant Identification, Herbal Medicine Making, and Useful Southern Plants!
This course is designed to be a one-stop-shop for foraging in the Southeast. Detailed video lessons will walk you through how to identify each plant, its edible and/or medicinal uses, how to make herbal medicines, and other practical foraging-related topics.
1-On-1 Access To The Instructor, So You Never Feel Like You're All On Your Own When Harvesting Plants!
When people start foraging they're often afraid they'll misidentify a plant and eat the wrong thing... OR, they find a new plant and have no idea what to do with it…
With The Southerner's Guide to Foraging this will never be a problem, because when you sign up, I’ll send you my personal email address so you can send me pictures of plants and ask as many questions as you want! I (Matthew) will personally answer your questions and confirm (or deny) your identifications so you know 100% for certain that you're eating the right plant!
By sending you my phone number, I make it as convenient as possible for you to quickly ask questions and get answers. All you have to do is snap a picture of a plant and shoot me a text.
The best part is, I’m offering this kind of 1-on-1 detailed instruction for a whole year! (and get ready, because when someone asks me a question, I take it very seriously. I’ve been known to write multi-paragraph emails when responding to students to make 100% sure they're fully equipped with the knowledge and confidence to actually harvest and use the plant they have in front of them.
Printable "1-Page" Plant Profiles So You Can Learn Plants Quickly and Identify Them With Confidence Once You Find Them
My 1-page plant profiles will make it easy to quickly start learning new edible and medicinal plants. Just scan through the pictures for a few minutes each day, and you’ll be amazed at how quickly you start finding new plants!
Each profile shows multiple parts of each plant, with a focus on key identification features so you can be 100% sure you have the right plant.
To make a confident ID, all you have to do is match each feature of the plant in front of you to numbers listed on the profile. If the plant you’re trying to identify matches each feature, you know you have the right plant!
These profiles are designed to help students memorize important plant features and learn important botanical terms without being too complicated for a beginner to use. I’ve even included red numbers that correspond to each identification feature, which makes using them easy and intuitive.
Each profile also summarizes important edible or medicinal uses for each plant to give you a starting point for further research.
Lastly, the profiles can be downloaded to your phone for use in the field, or downloaded to your computer so you can print them and have access to the information without access to internet or electricity.
Check out an example of one of my 1-Page Plant Profiles below!
Medicinal Plants Research Guide: Learn How to Effectively Research New Medicinal Plants You're Finding From Start to Finish (Step-by-Step Video Guide with PDF Checklist)
You've heard the saying "Give a man a fish, feed him for a day, teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime"...
As a foraging instructor I have the same approach. I don’t want to just show you a handful of edible and medicinal plants and send you on your way… I want to teach you how to learn, so that after the course is over you feel confident and equipped to find reliable information on how to use the common plants growing in your area to treat everyday ailments.
One of the ways I’m going to accomplish that is with my Medicinal Plants Research Guide. This video guide and downloadable checklist shows you the exact step-by-step process I use when I find a new plant and want to start using it.
This guide was made as a step-by-step “follow along” for you to use during your research. Once you’ve picked a plant you want to know more about, you’ll download the checklist, play the video, and follow each step, pausing the video as you complete each action. By the end of it, you’ll be amazed at how much you’ve learned and how much confidence you’ve gained to actually use the plant you’re learning about!
Check Out the Map Below to See the Exact Region This Course Covers...
The Southerner's Guide to Foraging covers a specific region of the Southern U.S. known as the Coastal Plain.
Plant life in this region is similar from end to end, so that students anywhere in the green area on the map will easily be able to locate plants covered in the course in their immediate area.
As you start to move outside of this region, plant life slowly starts to change. If you live to the north of the green area, most of the plants we discuss will still grow in your area (around 85-90%), as plant life is still quite similar throughout the whole Eastern US.
If you live west of the green area in central Oklahoma or central Texas, or if you live in the southern tip of Florida, there will still be some overlap, but keep in mind that plant life changes more drastically in those areas.
What If A Single Decision Taken Today Could Ensure You Have A Clean, Reliable, and FREE Source of Food For Many Years to Come?
✅ Discover the process my students and I use to identify edible plants with 100% confidence, so you can avoid eating poisonous look-alikes. (I’ve personally used this exact method to eat over 300 edible wild plants, and I’ve successfully taught students who were brand new to foraging.)
✅ Gain access to a reliable, organic food source that is pesticide free and non-GMO.
✅ Pass down important skills to the next generation before they lose the ability to be self-reliant!
✅ Discover the guidelines to sustainably harvest the different types of plants and ensure they keep coming back in healthy populations year after year.
✅ Get valuable insights and strategies for living off the land in a real food emergency- learned from over 10 years of regular foraging and extensive research.
✅ Discover the tips, techniques, and equipment for preparing and storing wild foods – so you know exactly what to do after you harvest them.
✅ Increase your awareness of the natural world and the Southern forests we call home!
By the end of this course, you’ll be equipped with everything you need to know to confidently harvest wild plants all on your own...
Join me and discover the forgotten skills, tools, and knowledge that enable my students to reconnect with nature, craft potent natural medicines, and access a reliable source of nutritious food nearly all year round!
Click the button above to enroll now!
This Course Includes Lifetime Access To All Course Videos and Materials!
Still On the Edge? It's All Backed by a 14 Day Money-Back Guarantee!
I'm so sure that you'll love this. course that I offer a 14 Day Money-Back Guarantee. If for ANY REASON you don’t like the program, you have 14 days after you sign up to change your mind and ask for a refund. No hassle, no hard feelings.
When you enroll today there’s absolutely no risk involved. If you feel like the course ends up not being what you expected, all you have to do is ask for your money back. It’s that simple.
Customer service is my top priority, so if you have any questions or concerns, you can expect a quick and responsive reply to get them taken care of.
Meet Your Instructor
Matthew Hunter is the creator of multiple outdoor education courses including Fundamentals of Wilderness Survival, Foraging 101, and Medicinal Plants of the Southeast. He’s been foraging for over a decade and has filmed over 150 videos on edible wild plants and outdoor skills.
Matthew lives with his wife, daughter, and son in West Monroe, Louisiana.
Frequently Asked Questions
What If I Don't Live in the Green Area on the Map?
Many of the plants covered in this course grow throughout the whole Eastern U.S., not just in the green area on the map. If you live north of the green zone, about 85%-90% of the plants we cover will still grow in your area. If you live west of the green zone, you'll still get quite a bit out of the course, but the dryer climate of central Texas and central Oklahoma will lower the amount of crossover. Lastly, if you live in south Florida, the climate becomes tropical and the plants become very different. This course will not be as good of a fit for you.
How Long Will I Be Able To Access The Course?
You'll have lifetime access to all course materials. They may occasionally be updated, but they won't ever be deleted.
Will This Course Work For My Son/Daughter?
The Southerner's Guide to Foraging is homeschool-mom approved. It was made for adults, but will also work great for high-schoolers as a nature/science/outdoor course. All of my lessons are family friendly, and after taking the course, your kiddos will be begging you to take them outside to explore! Get ready for a mess in the kitchen after enrolling in this course!
© 2025 Legacy Wilderness Academy LLC
By visiting this page, you agree to terms and conditions & privacy policy.
