For Bowen Islander Lisa Marie Bhattacharya, foraging for wild foods is a hobby, a passion. Mushrooms, she says, is what’s she’s really into. Medicinal mushrooms, Turkey Tails, for example, are abundant on Bowen and have been used for medicinal purposes for hundreds of years, but have also been proven to be a beneficial immune booster to people undergoing cancer treatment.
Hearing Bhattacharya’s foraging stories peaked the interest of her filmmaker step-sister, Deborah Burns-Johnson.
“I always knew I wanted to do something with Lisa Marie on foraging, but I wasn’t sure what,” says Burns-Johnson. “And then this competition, the Telus Storyhive came up, and I thought this was our chance.”
The idea Burns-Johnson (director), her husband Rich Johnson (producer) and Bh attacharya (host) came up with is called Found + Foraged, a video series to highlight the abundance of natural foods on British Columbia’s coast, and to tap into all the local expertise on these foods.
Filmed partially on Bowen, the pitch won one of fifteen $10,000 prizes to make a pilot episode, the Found and Foraged crew is getting ready to shoot their first actual episode of the show. The challenge, says Burns-Johnson, is finding the abundance their looking for in January. If they win the next round of competition and get the funding to do five episodes, that challenge will continue through the winter.
Whether of not they win, both Battacharya and Burns-Johnson say that the experience of putting the pitch together has got them excited enough about the idea to pursue it, whether or not funding from Telus pans out.
To check out the pitch for Found and Foraged, go to www.storyhive.com
