A Portrait of Anahit from Berd

*This portrait is a condensed text version of a short film produced by Epress with the support of Caucasus Edition. Originally published in Armenian on Epress.am. You can watch the film  https://epress.am/2025/07/25/the-gleaners-and-i.html

“I don’t like agriculture. Sow the seeds, water, treat, wait for it to grow... It’s not for me. I’m drawn to nature. It’s ready to harvest. You walk around, find what’s there, gather it, and come home.”

Anahit, 62, has spent the last years foraging in the mountains of Shamshadin. For her, it’s more than a way to make a living — it’s a lifestyle. “This is a poor region,” she says. “You can’t support a household just by vending.” She has tried many things in the past: running a small shop, keeping a cow and selling dairy, and baking pastries for nearby stores. None of it worked. “The most reliable thing here,” she says, “is collecting wild herbs and berries. You can’t go bankrupt, there are no taxes to deal with — it’s just you and wherever your feet take you.”

Anahit learned the art of gathering from Tamar, a woman from Vanadzor whom she calls “the ancestor of our valley.” Tamar taught her and others how to identify and distinguish the plants of the region. That knowledge has become a vital source of independence for many, especially in recent years.

Berd, the town near where Anahit lives, has faced deep uncertainty since the 2020 ceasefire in the aftermath of the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War. With its economy shaped by nearly three decades of militarization, the transition to peacetime has left a significant vacuum. In 2022, there was hope for rapid change, but little has materialized. Public development agencies recommended tourism and services as viable alternatives, and some ex-military contractors got creative — horseback riding tours, efforts to revive ancestral dishes, and craft-making. And yet, the promised wave of tourists never arrived.

Berd remains isolated, with its winding road to Yerevan skirting Azerbaijani trenches but not the natural challenges of the terrain. Fog, snow, and rockfalls make the journey risky. Still, Berdians have found beauty in their surroundings. More and more, they’ve become tourists in their own homeland, rediscovering the forests and fresh air with renewed appreciation.

For people like Anahit, this connection to nature is not new. “Agriculture is hard here anyway,” she says. “The soil doesn’t hold water. You have to irrigate constantly to get any harvest.” But the forests are rich — and they give all year round.

“There’s always something to find,” she says. Berries of every kind, lemongrass, wild spinach, asparagus, edible greens, and thyme. In addition to the wild growth, there’s also a public walnut grove — 3,000 trees planted back in the 1980s. Anyone can collect walnuts there.

The work follows the rhythm of nature. In winter, Anahit collects Solomon’s Seal. Spring brings chervil. Summer offers wild strawberries and walnuts. Autumn is for wild pears, raspberries, and blueberries. Wild apples and pears are used for making homemade vodka.

“Not long ago, I came across mushrooms I didn’t recognize,” she says with a laugh. “I joked that I needed to find someone to test them on.”

Solomon’s Seal is the trickiest to gather. “They’re only good for a few hours,” Anahit explains. “You have to catch them while the flower is still closed. Once it blooms, it’s useless. And they hide under the forest floor, beneath layers of leaves. You have to sweep around to find them.”

Through foraging, Anahit has raised four children and sent three of them to university. In the past, one or two days a week in the mountains was enough to support the family. Now, with rising prices, she’s out there five or six days a week. “The government’s tax policies make life harder for small and medium-sized businesses. Everything is more expensive. People need multiple jobs to make ends meet.”

Still, she doesn’t call what she does “work.”

“I enjoy it. Nature is my passion — it’s two in one. I get my income, and I get peace. I’m so fulfilled by my trips to the forest that I don’t even feel the need to travel. My daughter offers to take me to Paris or Rome, but I’m not interested. I’d only want to go to Jerusalem or Nazareth — the places of Jesus. But there’s war there now, and I’d be afraid. The only other place I dream of seeing is the pyramids in Egypt.”