A Feast of Reverence and Reciprocity - Wild food innovator Roushanna Gray reflects on a month of eating “in situ” at the southern tip of Africa
How truly nourishing the experience of eating, when you not only know the beautiful story behind every ingredient on your plate, but have also been a hands-on, multi-species collaborator in the deep and delicious processes of getting it there!
By Megan Lindow
Roushanna Gray is the creator of Veld and Sea, a gorgeous hub of wild food exploration and immersive, nature-based learning near Cape Point. I recorded this special podcast episode with Roushanna in early September, a short time after she and her husband Tom had completed a 30-day challenge during the month of July, eating only what they could grow on their small farm, forage themselves, or trade with their neighbors!
Listen to the podcast episode here:
We spoke in the wonderfully nature-quirky and characterful Glass House at Veld and Sea, where Roushanna hosts workshops and gatherings (you can see the lovely festive table, pictured above). A late southern hemisphere winter storm was swirling outside, bringing much-needed rain to quench the land ahead of what we anticipate may be a long and harsh southern hemisphere summer fire season, with El Niño and all. So naturally we paid homage to the strong elemental forces that shape this stormy, fiery, windswept part of the world — and explored how these elements infuse the flavor cycles of the Cape’s wild food seasonal calendar.
Veld and Sea sits at the foot of a mountain, on a narrow, rocky strip of peninsula, between two oceans. It lies within the Greater Cape Floristic Region, the world’s smallest biodiversity hotspot, full of uniquely adapted plants found nowhere else on earth. From the coastal fynbos to the edible succulents, a fabulous array of indigenous and endemic plants carry the salty, crunchy flavors of the sea, and the intense, aromatic flavors of the land. The wild bounty of the icy oceans is no less spectacular. The Cape Peninsula is blessed with gorgeous expanses of wild and (relatively) unpolluted coastline, where you can harvest fresh seaweed and mussels from the rocks at the lunar low tide, and free dive in abundant old growth kelp forests.
Roushanna had in fact been free diving in False Bay on the morning we met, taking the opportunity to practice her newly acquired spearfishing skills just before the storm rolled in. A burning curiosity had prompted me to reach out to Roushanna for this conversation. A thread of my own work for well over a decade now has been concerned with food systems (here at the Sustainability Institute, for example, as well as here, and here). Last year I had the privilege of spending a week with Roushanna and a bunch of other food and nature lovers in a process of Wild Earth Alchemy, experiencing the deliciousness of the food landscape in community. And yet, like so many folks, in my day-to-day life I often find myself rushing around without taking the time to eat mindfully or understand where my food comes from.. I long to escape the numbing daily grind of supermarkets and flinging stuff into a pan at the end of the day (OK, most days aren’t that bad!). But I also long for a slower rhythm of nature connection, artful living, distinctive flavors, and reciprocity with the living web that a more conscious relationship with food — grounded in ecology, community and place — would invite.
How truly nourishing the experience of eating, when you not only know the beautiful story behind every ingredient on your plate, but have also been a hands-on, multi-species collaborator in the deep and delicious processes of getting it there!
Connecting with the edible landscape through Roushanna's Wild Earth Alchemy offering in 2025 was a gift of immersion in beauty, creativity, rewilding and care in community! As these pictures highlight, regenerative growing and responsible foraging means care for the living communities of the land and sea. Among so many other special encounters, we were also blessed to experience the beauty of slow artmaking and conversation with Aaniyah Martin, co-creator of the new Veld and Sea Co-op, who envisioned and tends the beautiful Mother Hydro-rug, a collective stitching, mending and public storytelling piece that holds the living memories, racial scars and healing stories of people, land and sea along the False Bay coastline of the Cape. See www.thebeachcoop.org/hydrorug/
I was fascinated to hear Roushanna describe what it actually takes to sustain yourself daily from a ‘hyper-local ingredients basket’ (Spoiler alert: feeding yourself pretty much becomes a full time job). I was curious to explore how swapping food, skills, and stories with your neighbor helps to strengthen community bonds. And I wondered how the qualities of deep, close attunement to the rhythms and cycles and interspecies relationships of the land might enliven the body and mind, and restore visceral feelings of kinship, interbeing and interbecoming — those ropes of connection I’ve touched on in previous writings.
Roushanna spoke to each of these questions and more, elaborating on the posts she shared from each day of the 30-day challenge on her Instagram profile. You can view all of those posts, starting with the first one here:
As she described in our episode, Day 30 ended with a celebratory community feast in the Glass House, bringing together all those involved in the Farm Fasting / Feasting month. Since we spoke, Roushanna has been making up for all the time she spent slowing down! In September, she celebrated the 10-year anniversary of Veld and Sea, and also launched the new Veld and Sea Co-op, a non-profit collaboration of remembrance, guardianship and care, led with the fabulous intersectional scholar, activist and artist Aaniyah Martin, founder of the Beach Co-op, and Sima Asia. This new initiative is dedicated to restoring indigenous knowledge and nature connection practices that have long been denied to people through the legacies of racial segregation, inequality and exclusion.
This month Roushanna also launches her new book, called Wildly Delicious!
I left Veld and Sea feeling grateful for all human and more-than-human beings around the world who care for and support life in different ways — and inspired to practice greater care and attunement in my own life. And then me and my family promptly got sick, in a wave of disruption that spanned most of the past month! So now that we’re all back in good health, it’s back to those small, simple intentions to eat mindfully and well — with deep reverence for the earth and the living web through which our own lives are supported. As Roushanna herself says, it all comes down to balance. A healthy dose of land, sea and community!
A slightly longer version of this article was also published on my Substack, Living Stories:
Megan Lindow
Our StoryMoss vision is to be a heart-centered StoryWeaving, StoryHealing collaborator, weaving with deep ecology thinkers and practitioners around the world to explore and amplify the collective field of regenerative storytelling in a light, joyful and evocative way, inspired by a vision of Active Hope. Please hit the subscribe button to support and follow our work, and find us on YouTube, Substack, LinkedIn and Instagram.
