There is a moment, somewhere between the second mimosa and the morel toast, when a guest at one of my Wild Brunches will lean back, look at the plate, and ask me — usually with a kind of dazed reverence — "Where did you get all of this?"
I always tell them the truth. They never quite expect the answer.
The walnuts on top of the salad? I fought a bear for those. There are bears in my life right now and at least one of them thinks the walnut tree on my property is theirs. I have negotiated with them. We have an arrangement. The arrangement is that I get the walnuts that are still on the tree at 5:30 in the morning, and they get whatever is on the ground by 7:00. I respect their schedule. They mostly respect mine.
The asparagus? I picked twelve ticks off my body the day I gathered that asparagus. Twelve. I counted. One was already settled in. The asparagus is wild — it grows along the irrigation ditches in places nobody mows, which is also where the ticks live, which is fair, because they were there first. The asparagus is also better than anything you've ever bought from a grocery store. There is a reason for that. The reason is the wildness that the ticks are part of. The asparagus and the ticks are the same ecosystem. You don't get one without the other. So I count my ticks, and I serve you the asparagus, and I tell you about the ticks at breakfast because I want you to understand what's actually on your plate.
The morels? I am on my hands and knees in leaf litter at dawn, in a patch of forest where I have to do a careful little dance around poison ivy that grows in dense mats exactly where the morel mushrooms love to come up. I am not exaggerating. I have a very specific way of moving in that forest. I plant my feet between the poison ivy stems, lower myself down, prop on one elbow, dig with the other hand. I have not gotten poison ivy yet. I am sure I will. The morels are worth it.
By the time you sit down at my breakfast table, I have already had a full morning. I have negotiated with bears, paid the tick tax, and danced with the poison ivy. The bread was made the night before. The eggs are from chickens I raised. The flowers on the plate were picked while it was still cool enough that they hadn't yet given up their fragrance to the day.
This is what your brunch actually costs.
I'm telling you this not to brag — although I admit, twelve ticks is a number worth bragging about — but because there is a particular kind of guest who finds my Wild Brunch and is genuinely confused about why it is what it is. They know it's something special. They can taste it. But they can't quite name what makes it different from the other excellent brunches they've had in their lives. And the answer is: this one was foraged by a single human being who got down in the dirt for it, this morning, while you were still asleep.
That's not a marketing claim. It's a labour cost.
I don't run Wild Brunches every weekend. I can't. The forest doesn't produce on demand, and neither do I. When morels are in, we have morels. When chanterelles are in, we have chanterelles. When asparagus is in, we have asparagus. When none of those are in, we don't have a Wild Brunch. We have a regular extraordinary breakfast, which is also good, but is not the thing.
If you want to come, you have to come on the day the forest is ready. Not the day you are.
That, also, is part of what your brunch costs.
The practical bits
A Wild Brunch at Global Village runs $85–$95 per person. It's typically four courses, plate-presented, designed around what's actually growing or foraging-ready that week. We sit at the long table on the patio when the weather allows. The menu is never the same twice, because the forest is never the same twice.
If you're staying at the B&B, ask about adding it to your visit. If you're a local who wants in, the calendar updates when dates are confirmed.