Chop Wood, Carry Water

In a departure from my normal urban foraging, I’ve spent the last little while at The Utopia Experiment, in Scotland. The fresh air and good company are doing me a power of good, and I’m very, very glad I managed to get here.

I have been doing some foraging while I’m here. I’ve found chanterelle mushrooms for the first time, as well as some blackcurrants that are so big and juicy and sweet that I’ll eat them straight from the bush although I’m normally not a currant fan. The wild cherries, or Gean berries as they are called here, are quite delightful, and the raspberries are superb. I’ve also found most of the usual greens – hedge garlic (sadly past its best), sorrel, shepherd’s purse, various oilseed rape escapes, yarrow, narrow-leaved plantain, broad-leaved plantain, bladder campion, goosegrass, ground elder, chickweed and of course, nettles. The nettles here are quite fierce and I’ve come out in blisters from their sting a few times.

Other than foraging I’ve been doing bits and pieces around the site. We cook with wood here, and after getting quite tired of blowing ash into my face I built a bellows out of discarded plastic bags, cardboard boxes, foil tape, wood and a beer can. It works well, but the wooden handles keep coming off – I think some modification will be necessary for a more durable tool. I’ve been chopping wood, refilling the kettle from the standpipe (still on mains water but work continues apace on the water filter), sleeping in a yurt, feeding the chickens and the pigs, helping with general garden things (weeding, planting out autumn brassicas, and the all-important harvesting of peas…mmm… peas…) and doing quite a bit of cooking.

I’ll be leaving this place on Saturday to spend a week in Somerset studying Ki-Aikido, and we are very, very short of volunteers up here. I’ll be back in London after that and unable to get away again for quite some time. If you’re in the UK or planning to be in the UK before TUE comes to an end in September 2008, staying here for a while is a wonderful opportunity to get out of the city and learn a bit about some self-sufficient living and pass on some skills of your own.

We really really really need more people – special skills don’t matter too much if you’re willing to learn and can apply common sense and stamina to a problem. After about the middle of August it’s really sparse. If you’re interested in coming – even just for a weekend – please contact tue[at]the-earth-effect[dot]com for more information. The website is a bit daunting but really, the people here are lovely and it’s great to get into the countryside for a while.

Foraging Log 6

Time: about 90 minutes, but this included lots of walking around
Place: Southwark Park, Bermondsey
Gathered: 10 lingering Saskatoon berries. About 1.5kg of cherries, not counting the ones that ended up in my tummy as I was picking.

Southwark Park has more in it than I had suspected, and I will be returning there. The cherries are excellent – juicy and sweet. When I pick cherries, I always taste a few from each tree, because there are so many different varieties and some of them taste better than others. One tree had large, dark, juicy cherries on it, but on tasting they were so bitter I decided not to gather those ones after all.

There are several Turkish Hazel (Corylus colurna) trees; I will be going back for their nuts later in the year. I also look forward to sampling some of the plums around. There is a walnut tree – I think it is the Black Walnut (Juglans nigra), also known as the “No, you won’t get this open without a sledgehammer” walnut. I may stick to the easier-to-open Persian (aka English) walnuts that I know of, instead, but if I miss them it’s nice to know there will be a source that the squirrels haven’t been able to decimate. Although I don’t much like them I’m quite pleased to have found blackcurrants. They aren’t in very good condition, I think the lack of rain in April and the abundance of it in June has confused them a bit.

Cherries! What to do with 1.5kg of them? Some were mixed with ground almonds and a bit of golden syrup, and used as a filling for sweet croissants. I stewed the rest and have been eating them with yoghurt, with ice cream, just on their own… I may well try cooking them some more to remove moisture and making a fruit spread. I’d really like to have a dehydrator to dry some with – I’m sure if I go back in the next few days there will be more – but that is not part of my current equipment stock. I might try doing some of them in a low oven, though, when it looks like I’ll be home long enough.

Foraging Log 4

Time: Perhaps 10 minutes total, last night
Place: Cathay Street, Bermondsey
Gathered: About a cupful of cherries.

This was absolutely lovely, really. We were on the way to the pub and I saw the bright red cherries in a tree across the road and ran over to try some. They were soft and juicy and sweet, so after getting to the pub and ordering food I went back with a sheet of newspaper rolled into a cone and picked some more of those I could reach. I got rained on both times but didn’t really care.

The temptation to go back this morning armed with a stepladder is actually quite high. Those are some very fine cherries indeed, better than I could get in a supermarket and absolutely free. I will certainly be back for more next year.

Foraging Log 2

Time: Around an hour on a Wednesday evening
Place: Millwall Park, E14
Gathered: Enough fennel for a large salad, a few leaves of wormwood for tea, but there was lots else if we’d wanted it. Later and not actually in Millwall Park, a couple of cherries each.

A week or so ago, I went for a gentle amble around Millwall Park with a friend. This particular friend hasn’t done much foraging, so I found myself pointing out many plants I might not normally look twice at.

The south end of the park has gardens, mostly full of roses and lavender; the woodchips are a good place to look for fungi later in the year but there were none visible that evening despite recent rain. There are a few areas in the south and west of the park where the grass is allowed to grow long, and in those there a multitude of wild greens. These include Shepherd’s Purse, Narrow-leaved Plantain, Broad-leaved Plantain, Fat hen, chamomile, mugwort, yarrow, wormwood, bladder campion, wild rocket, sand leek, dock, dandelion, wild fennel and various types of wild mustard or cabbage.

Some of these, like Shepherd’s Purse, campion, wild rocket, leek, fennel, and dandelion, make excellent salad leaves; they can also be cooked. Shepherd’s Purse is related to cabbage and the seeds in their heart-shaped pods can be used, as well as the leaves, to add a peppery flavour to soups and salads. Wild rocket is also quite peppery – far more so than the spiritless, half-wilted leaves available in plastic bags from supermarkets – and should be used with care, more as a condiment than a basis for an entire salad. Dandelion leaves are best in the early spring when they are young and tender, later on they tend to be quite bitter. Sand leeks are pretty much done for this year, but when they’re around in earlier months they can be picked and used just like chives. Campion leaves are quite delicious, I think they taste like a cross between lettuce and fresh peas, but the older ones are a little hairy sometimes so stick to the younger ones. Various mustard and wild cabbage leaves are also edible raw, but tend to be quite strong in flavour.
Chamomile, mugwort, yarrow and wormwood are known more for their medicinal properties than plain food value. I’ve long used chamomile flower tea as an anti-spasmodic. Wormwood and mugwort leaves are both used as flavourings and contain thujone, the active component in absinthe – they should be taken in moderation. Yarrow leaves are a useful astringent, and are said to make a wonderfully cooling tea in summer.

Other plants spotted that evening do need to be cooked. I’m not actually sure whether Fat Hen can be consumed raw, but both it and dock leaves contain oxalic acid, which can cause problems with iron absorption if eaten in excess. I haven’t tried either wide-leaved or narrow-leaved plantain myself; my understanding is that they are edible, but tough, and require quite a bit of cooking to be eaten easily.

It’s comforting to know I can throw together a soup and a salad from wild ingredients near most parks for a good portion of the year, but we’d already eaten, so this wasn’t necessary. We did venture a little further north into Mudchute Farm, and sampled the first cherries of the year, straight from the tree. Delicious!

Foraging Log 1

Time: 1 hour on a Sunday afternoon
Place: Hendon Park
Gathered: None, but not for lack of abundance.

This slow amble around Hendon Park on a day of mixed cloud and sun was undertaken to kill time between other commitments. Little tiny proto-walnuts are beginning to form on the walnut tree. I also had another look at a tree I haven’t identified yet, which has small, hard green fruits. I think it may be Arbutus unedo, also known as a “strawberry tree” – I’ve seen these in gardens in this part of London. If that’s what it is, I look forward to sampling the fruit when it ripens.

Several trees have been removed from the perimeter of the park, but it does seem that they are being replaced elsewhere. Still, I shall miss the two hawthorn trees that had haws the size of small crab-apples! The grass was freshly mown as well, so there wasn’t as much in the way of greens at the edges as there often is in this particular park. I did see one bunch of mushrooms, but they were in poor condition and my phone battery died before I could take a picture.

Elderflower is still doing nicely, and I hope to get on with making champagne this week. I also found a Saskatoon berry tree (Amelanchier alnifolia, although it could be another Amelanchier species) that I hadn’t noticed before, to add to the two already in the park. Those berries will be ripening sometime in the next few weeks, and once they do that they’ll disappear very quickly to the birds.

It is unfortunate that most of the plum trees in Hendon Park have peach leaf curl disease, which leads to withered, premature fruit no good for eating. The cherries are doing better, but I don’t think many will be spared by the birds, and I do know of sweeter, larger cherry varieties elsewhere in London.

The only other thing of note is that a monkey puzzle tree (Araucaria araucana) in one of the private gardens has cones on. I may just work up the nerve to ask if I could have one when they ripen.