Foraging Class

When I lived in London before the pandemic, I had a short lived blog. Because of the change in seasons we're in now I thought it would be a good time to dig it out of the archive and post it up here.

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2018...

Last Sunday I went to a foraging class - my first foraging class! Blackberry picking has been a part of my life since I was tiny and is an important tradition to me. Living in London, I've had several years of not picking berries, and I'm not going to lie, I've felt lost. For me this tradition is about far more than scrambling around in hedges collecting a tasty snack. Being out and hands-on with nature really roots us in the present. It forces us to get out of our own heads and notice what is going on around us. Walking past the same clump of brambles and noticing them getting greener, flowering, being smothered with butterflies, producing hard green little bumps which slowly turn red and deepen into inky purple before being covered with a grey fuzz and shrinking into nothingness as the brambles go to sleep for the winter. It gives us a sense of time passing and life progressing which you just do not get in the city. In London there are so few varieties of greenery that everything blossoms and dies back at once, and everything is so manicured - the second things start looking a bit tired they get dug up and replaced by armies of council gardeners so flower beds don't look 'ugly'. Autumn gets bypassed as trees shed at the same time and are instantly 'tidied up' within a week and summer has suddenly turned into a dark, bleak and unbearably long winter. Obviously my sense of being cut off from the rhythms of nature wasn't helped by being cooped up in an air conditioned office all day, leaving home and coming back in the dark. But thankfully that season of my life is over and I have no intention of living in the city again.

I realise this was an insanely long precursor to this post, but I'm trying to emphasise why I think it's important we get back in touch with the land. Nature is the thing that gives us life and sustains us - not our salaries and cubicles and swivel chairs in glass coated air conditioned offices - regardless of what the financial sector tells us. I realised that for all my chat about being a naturephile I didn't really know much about what I could eat outside a vegetable patch or the supermarket, so the chap booked the pair of us on a foraging course at the Earth Trust in Oxfordshire to learn a bit more.

The lady who gave the talk, Romilly, was an absolute legend and a really interesting human being. She grew up fairly feral, from the age of 11 living independently in an old gypsy caravan she'd commandeered from her botanist father who had wanted to turn it into a log store, and fended largely for herself from food she foraged. She could not emphasise enough the importance of being connected to the land, understanding it, being able to read it, and live alongside it. Like me, she firmly believes there is a very strong link between disassociation with the land and mental, physical and behavioural problems; and thinks the fear around wild food is totally unfounded and needs to be addressed.

She has a very relaxed and philosophical approach to life and thinks that by wrapping children up in so many layers of cotton wool we are not protecting them but preventing them from being curious, learning, and really experiencing the world. And she has a point - it is totally smothering. She said that when they say they announce they're going to teach children how to light a fire, teachers and parents get worried that the little darlings might hurt themselves - and her response is that they're not going to be able to seriously hurt themselves by lighting a fire - if they get a burn it will be a mild one, there is a bucket of water on standby for the hand to be dunked into, skin grows back and they will learn to light a fire correctly, respect fire, and not make the same mistake again - there's no reason why children should be sheltered from learning a skill our species has been using for 6 million years and which has rarely caused lasting damage when used carefully.

According to Romilly, 200 years ago, the average child could name and recognise over 250 species of edible and poisonous plants. Today, the average adult (forget child!) struggles to name even 20. Thousands of years of working with the land, and all that knowledge has been lost since WW2 because of the rise in things like commercial farming and supermarkets: we eat what we find available in the shops because someone in authority has told us that it's safe. If we see mushrooms or berries on trees, we tend to assume that most of it is poisonous to humans and give it a wide berth, when in fact that is totally untrue. I have so much time for this lady - she is the most grounded person I've ever met and I wish I knew more people like her.

Romilly making nettle and oat fritters.

So we had a little walk around their arboretum and she pointed out a bunch of berries we could eat. I really wanted to learn about mushrooms but unfortunately they're on chalkland which isn't really ideal for mushrooms, and the squirrels had had a lot of the berries and nuts.

Things I learned you can/can't eat:

Some of these I already knew, but some were a real eyeopener. As a general rule of thumb, if a berry has a bum like an apple - that is - 5 segments, you can probably eat it. If the leaves are like roses and produce hips like rosehips, then you can eat it.

Elderberries - you need to be careful with these because dogwood has fruit that looks a lot like elderberries, so make sure you are picking the right ones by familiarising yourself with the leaves of the elder. (I already knew about these, but still misidentify them sometimes)

Potatoes - are members of the nightshade family.. so generally just keep away from them, they're not good news. Stick with the safe breeds you get in the supermarket.

Rosehips - (I already knew about) little red tear drop shaped berries on spiky rose bushes. All rosehips are totally safe to eat. Romilly said that the seeds inside contain an irritant so they should be removed if you plan to eat them... I've never had a problem with them, but I suppose some are more sensitive than others. The chap's mother would sometimes put them down the back of his neck for a laugh, as the hairs on the seeds make itching powder.

Hawthorn berries. Little red berries on a bush that has leaves shaped a little like oak leaves. They're quite bitter and meaty but don't really taste of very much. They're not something you'd particularly want to eat for pudding, but they're good for your heart and can help with problems like angina, they're packed with vitamins, and can help lower cholesterol.

Hawthorn leaves. They looks a little like oak leaves and the young leaves in spring taste like green apple skins and they're really nice to have in salads and sandwiches

Wild Service berries (which I kept mishearing as 'World Service'). They look like tiny russet apples. They're not very nice when they're hard, but they turn a darker, purplish colour when they get squidgy and taste a like sour apricots. I want to grow a Service tree and make jelly to go with cheese! it would be so perfect! They're also high in b2, iron, biotin and manganese.

Stinging Nettles are not so good at this time of year - you want them fairly fresh and before they seed. Boiled down they taste like spinach and are delicious mixed with oats and fried! Like healthy popcorn and packed with vitamin A, calcium, iron and protein - so good for veggies and vegans!

Dead Nettles are packed with vitamin A and are great for your blood, and can be used in salads and soups

Chickweed can be eaten in salad - I didn't try it but I believe it's part of the rocket family so a little peppery

Sloes - big round greyish purple berries on the blackthorn bush. Good for gin after the first frosts (or a spell in the freezer). Absolutely disgusting if just eaten off the branch.

Mushrooms can be iffy - some are really obviously ok to eat like shaggy ink cap mushrooms, others have lookalikes which are poisonous so unless you really know your stuff you're best leaving them both alone.

Juniper berries - quite rare to find juniper bushes - these berries have a very strong medicinal gin flavour. And the bush is really bloody spiky.

Yew berries - look like they should be totally poisonous Everything else about Yew trees is extremely toxic so literally the only part that won't kill you or make you really ill is the pinky red donut shaped berry around the seed. The seed is also extremely poisonous so you'll need to remove that before eating it. The berry generally dissolves into a disgusting slimy mess once you pull it apart to get the seed out. It's like handling an exploding snail - it's really nasty. Although it is very sweet and tastes good. For me the reward is not worth the effort, but it's good to know I won't starve in the event of an apocalypse.

Fir tree - cut off a sprig and stick it in hot water and you have a surprisingly delicious tea. remember to check for spiders first so you don't accidentally boil the poor things alive.

Lemon Balm - makes a nice tea

Yarrow - is a herb with lots of tiny leaves and clumps of tiny little white or lavender coloured flowers and it is massively overlooked. There's a good article by wellnessmama that goes into more detail, but in short it's excellent for shortening colds, breaking fevers and healing wounds. Can be used externally and internally and is generally a great medicinal plant to have in your arsenal.

Pineapple Weed is a little plant often found beside paths and is chamomile's little sister, and has a very pineapply scent and the flowers make a nice tea.

There are very few foods in nature that can kill you!

But some do have some pretty unpleasant side effects. For example purging buckthorn used to be used by the Anglo Saxons as a (surprise surprise) purging remedy. God knows why anyone would need that, but that's what it was used for anyway. Although the effects are pretty severe, so now they're only really used by vets to induce purging in dogs and other animals. As I already mentioned Yew can kill you - just ingesting a couple of tiny leaves is enough to kill a toddler. Cuckoo Pint aka Lords and Ladies causes severe irritation of the mouth and throat. In severe cases, Hemlock can kill you by paralysing your lungs. Mushrooms can be pretty lethal, but generally the names of them are a good clue that they're bad news: With names like 'deathcap' 'fool's conecap' 'Satan's Bolete' 'deadly webcap' 'fool's webcap' and 'destroying angel' you wouldn't particularly want to take your chances anyway.

Generally, however, most 'poisonous' plants are not as poisonous as we are scared into thinking they are, and will at worst either make you throw up or have the squits rather than put you in hospital or an early grave.

We went back to base and cooked up what we'd gathered. The nettle and oat fritters were absolutely delicious, The baked walnuts were like nothing I've ever tasted before - there is SUCH a difference between the crud available to us in the shops and the stuff fresh off the tree it's unreal!! The berries were reduced in a pan, sieved, sugared and then spread on a baking tray to become fruit leather... honestly it was pretty vile - the berries were so tart I would need another couple of bags of sugar added before I would be able to eat them without screwing up my face. I don't know if that says more about the berries or more about how conditioned we are now to having sugar in everything. The fir tree tee was lovely, the lemon balm tea smelled like sherbet but tasted a bit like washing up liquid to me. I wish we had covered more things and ventured further afield because it was so interesting and there is so much to learn!

How to forage and not be a dickhead:

If you fancy giving foraging a try, here are some hard and fast rules on how to do it and not be a dickhead:

1. This is the most important rule: Take only where there is an abundance of that thing, take only what you absolutely need, and leave behind more than you take. This isn't about leaving stuff for the next person. Humans are an incredibly invasive and destructive species: we have bulldozed so much land to make way for ourselves with buildings and roads and farming, and we attack every plant and 'pest' living where we don't think it should with poison. We have massively reduced the amount of wild food accessible to wild life. We have the luxury of supermarkets and imported food force grown in poly tunnels through winter - wildlife doesn't. We don't depend on hedgerows for sustenance - they do. Leave stuff for those who truly need it. Don't be a dickhead.

2. Avoid picking anything from the side of roads - even in country lanes - and always pick above knee level. You don't know what they've been sprayed with. Don't be a dickhead.

3. Unless you 100% know what something is, don't put it in your face. Don't be a dickhead.

4. Don't trespass - Fences and wires are there for a reason - that land belongs to someone else that isn't you. Don't be a dickhead.

I want to book myself on more courses in the future so I can learn about different plants that are useful at different times of year and definitely more about mushrooms!