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 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 TIPS FOR BEGINNERS: I. PAY ATTENTION!

This is the first article in a series of foraging tips for beginners.

The ability to pay attention to detail is crucial in successful foraging. Many people walk past huge amounts of food on a daily basis, but they don’t know it is there because all they see is “green stuff”. A large amount of that green stuff is tasty, nutritious and free. There are no plants that are not worth identifying.

Part of paying attention to detail is about familiarity and knowing what to look for, but a larger part of it is cultivating a sense of curiosity. Take a closer look at that patch of waste ground by the supermarket – what do you see? Dandelions? Stinging nettles? What else is there? Go for a walk around the block and see if you can identify the trees on your street. To begin with it’s enough to notice that some of them have needles and others have true leaves. Later, you can find out how many of them are native to your area. Are any of them edible species? Find a park to eat your lunch in, and make a task of walking around some part of it each day; become familiar with the flora and fauna there.

Don’t just rely on your eyesight, either. Stop and smell the roses, literally. Also smell the peppery wild rocket, the pungent hedge garlic and the cool, sweet fennel. Feel the cat’s-tongue roughness of goose grass. It’s probably a good idea to avoid smelling or touching the nettles, though, unless you actually like being stung.

After a while of making an effort to pay attention, you’ll start to notice things. You’ll start to notice the shapes of leaves, stems and flowers, rather than just the colour; you’ll start to see how the seasons change your local landscape. This is incredibly useful. Those nettles might be too old and stringy to be any good for eating now, but they’ll be back come springtime.

Once you have developed the habit of learning details past the general differentiating characteristics most of us are taught in childhood, (“The big green tree…”), you’ll find the world is richer than you might have imagined. I think it’s worth the effort just for that, even if you don’t eat any of what you study.