Foraging Log 9

Time: An hour, early evening
Place: Hendon Park
Gathered: a handful of fairy ring champignons, a smaller handful of mulberries

The hazelnuts are nearly all gone now, the squirrels have got the lot! There may still be time to experiment with acorns, although they do require significant preparation.

The mulberries are almost gone now, they’re too delicious to keep hanging around and they don’t last well once they are off the tree.

The fairy ring champignons will very shortly be an omelet ingredient in my brunch. Yum!

This afternoon there is a plan for blackberry picking, so I’ll probably have another foraging log in the next few days.

Note: The Utopia Experiment is still desperately short-handed, if you think you can get up there, even for a weekend, please join the Yahoo! group and let us know when you can get there.

Easing back into the real world…

I’m in Somerset this week, at Ki-Aikido summer school. The class schedule is relaxed enough that I’ve been able to get out and about a little bit. I haven’t done huge amounts of foraging while I’ve been here – about a pound of plums the other day that were hanging over a car park in Highbridge, and the odd handful of blackberries from beside the various lanes. Lots of things are starting to ripen nicely, and I expect I’ll have plenty to harvest when I get back to London if it hasn’t all been rained away.

Things to watch for, at least in the south of England, in the next few weeks:

• Hazelnuts–ideally you want to get this when they’re just starting to ripen, if you wait until they’re properly ripe then the squirrels will have the lot.
• Mulberries–these are planted as ornamental trees, usually, but the fruit is quite edible once it gets dark. It doesn’t keep at all so you need to either eat it, juice it, freeze it or jam it the same day you pick it. Personally I tend to eat it straight away.
• Walnuts are getting big now and, just like the hazelnuts, if you want to eat them instead of letting the squirrels take them all, you’ll have to get there quickly.
• Elderberries–some people find that there are laxative effects from eating these raw, although personally I’ve never had a problem with the odd handful. They make good wine, good jam and good juice or syrup. I’ve even had elderberry port, although to be fair I didn’t make it myself.
• Grapes are also quite common as ornamentals and can range from deliciously sweet to rather too tart for eating.
• Apples! Some won’t be ready yet but it’s difficult to tell this year as the weather has been quite odd.
• Blackberries, of course.
• Fennel seeds when they start to ripen, which may be pretty soon. You can use them as a condiment, or sprout them.
• Various other seeds – hedge garlic, rocket, shepherd’s purse and various other wild brassicas are good for sprouting.
• Poppy seeds are edible and have a nice nutty flavour, although collecting any great quantity from the wild can be daunting.

That’s probably all from me until after I’m back to London, unless I find something really spectacular that warrants a post of its own.

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 8

Time: Perhaps 90 minutes on a weekday evening
Place: Mudchute Park and Farm
Gathered: A good handful of blackberries and 600g plums (mostly yellow with some red ones mixed in).

This was an ad-hoc foraging session; two friends and I were walking back from somewhere else and couldn’t resist looking around. We stopped because it was getting too dark to forage, I’m sure there would have been more plums hiding if we’d covered a few more paths. Also we would have managed more if we’d had a chair to stand on. We also saw loads of hazelnuts, which are huge this year though not yet ripe. When they just start to ripen is the time to pick them, wait any longer and the squirrels will have the entire lot. I should really plan better, I was wearing sandals and got stung by nettles quite a bit.

Foraging Log 7

Time: Perhaps 2 hours
Place: New River Path, Islington, from Essex Road to Canonbury station.
Gathered: A handful or two of lemon balm, some walnuts for pickling, and a few early-but-edible apples

A friend asked me to arrange some foraging as she was going to be in town, so I did. I had some difficulty choosing a location but decided on the New River Path because there is quite a variety of plants there and also because I had promised to point out Amelanchier alnifolia. It’s also quite handy for getting to the Pembury Tavern, which has good food and good beer and, on this occasion, also had Morris dancers.

There were quite a few of us – 6 or 7. I pointed out many of the plants I could identify, and some I couldn’t. It was hot and sunny and we were glad of the shade provided by the trees. We gathered some lemon balm near the beginning. The wild strawberries were pretty much past eating so we left them well alone; edible weeds in a vacant carpark behind a closed branch of MECCA weren’t looking particularly healthy so they were left. Many lovely walnuts were picked from the walnut tree, though, and the little red heart-shaped apples are nearly ripe.

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 5

Time: a very slow two-hour wander
Place: Crane Park, Whitton
Gathered: a few sour cherries, three Jew’s Ear mushrooms, and a small handful of hedge garlic

This weekend I was at a friend’s party in the pleasant leafy suburb of Whitton. A group of us went to the local park to take some air in between rainstorms and food.

A few apple trees and a pear tree were apparent quite near the beginning of our walk; those fruits won’t be ripe for a while yet but the trees are fruiting very well. While taking shelter from yet another of the intermittent showers, I found some Jew’s Ear fungus (Auricularia auricula-judae), a treat at this point in the year as they are much easier to find in winter when there aren’t so many leaves on the trees. Later, nearer the riverbank, I found some young hedge garlic (Alliaria petiolata), a pungent member of the brassica family. At this time of year much of the hedge garlic in the London area is getting old and leggy and going to seed, and not tasting so nice. I do have some ideas incubating for the seed

The hedge garlic and the Jew’s Ear fungus ended up on homemade pizza later in the evening. Yum!

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.

Plant identification process

So, you’re out on a bicycle or going for a walk, and you see a plant you can’t identify. It’s fairly distinctive – you’d recognise the same thing elsewhere – but you have no idea what it is. What do you do?

I try to make a mental or physical note of the distinctive features. I might cut off some leaves or flowers if there’s a lot of it, to aid in later identification. If there are flowers, what colour are they? How many petals have they got? Are they regular or not? How tall is the plant? What colour are the leaves? What shape is the stem? All of these are important.

When I get home, I look the plant up in a field guide that is organised based on plant characteristics. There are several of these available, particularly for wildflowers. The one I use the most is actually an older version of Britain’s Wildlife, Plants and Flowers (by Reader’s Digest). Most often I find that even if I can’t identify the specific plant, I can find one or two that are similar enough to give me a good starting place.

Having done that to find a Latin name, I check my other books and go online, often to Wikipedia, and using google image searches, to see if what I find matches up with my first identification. Most of the time it does but occasionally I find differences. If Wikipedia doesn’t tell me anything about whether the plant can be used, I check at the Plants For A Future database. I also make a point of learning common names for the plant.

I then go back to the original site with books and whatever other resources I can carry to double-check the identification. If the plant is closely related or easily mistaken for anything poisonous (good foraging books will tell you this!) I always take someone else with me in case I’ve missed some details.

This all sounds rather ponderous, but it does mean that once I have learned a plant I’m likely to recognise it most places I might come across it, and remember how it can be used.

Foraging Log 3

Time: About ninety minutes on a Friday evening
Place: New River Path, Islington, N1, from Essex Road to St. Paul’s Road.
Gathered: nothing, because I wasn’t really hungry, and didn’t have a sensible way to carry anything
Other notables: I saw a heron!

Islington is where I was living in 2004, just before I started getting seriously interested in foraging. It was interesting to re-visit my old stomping-ground, and view it through more educated eyes. Islington doesn’t have a lot of green space, but the space that exists is very pleasant.

Lemon balm (Melissa officinalis), with its mint-like leaves and fresh scent, was the first edible I spotted on this particular walk. It does make a lovely tea. This was soon followed by a real treasure – wild strawberries (Fragaria vesca)! I’ve not seen them in London before now, so I was quite pleased. I didn’t pick any, though. As I kept walking I saw a fair amount of feverfew (Tanacetum parthenium), as well as violets growing on ornamental rocks.

A churchyard contained fenced-off areas of “bog garden” – I think they’ll need more rain to get established properly, but at least the gardener is trying to give them a chance. There was also a healthy walnut tree, and something that is some sort of peach. The fruits were green and hard and fuzzy. I will definitely be going back later in the year for closer investigation! Unfortunately that tree did not look terribly healthy, though whether the problem is one of old age or disease I cannot tell.

Across Canonbury Road, then, and into the area of the path where there is actually some “river”. The New River is now a very slow-moving stream, thick with algae. I saw a huge heron, although of course I do not eat those, and several ducks. One of the plants I remember from previous explorations of the New River Path is also looking like it should provide well this year. This is a variety of apple, I’m not sure which, that produces small, heart-shaped apples, pink and sweet, with a line of darker pink in their flesh partway in. There are three or four of these spread through the park from Canonbury Road to St. Paul’s Road, and I always mean to go back in apple season and get some, as they would look fantastic dried.

I also saw several roses which will produce lovely hips, white valerian amongst a patch of ivy, a second probably-peach tree, a few stands of bamboo, a lone Saskatoon berry tree, various planted ornamental herbs, and more willow than you could shake a stick at.

Further on again, after crossing a bridge, I found a few bushes that I’ve not yet identified. I cannot decide whether they might be cloudberries or salmonberries. The fruits resemble cloudberries more, but the flowers are pink rather than white, like salmonberries. I didn’t eat any – I never do if I don’t know what something is – but I will be going back to have a closer look.

All along the stream, on the other side of course, were plenty of elder trees and blackberries. There were a few on the accessible side too.

Near the exit at St. Paul’s Road there was a rather magnificent fennel plant, and various ornamental herbs, some of which I believe must be related to tansy. It was starting to get dark at this point, and I didn’t really want to hang around on my own trying to identify plants in poor light.