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 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.

Strawberries

Last spring, I bought some strawberry plants in a bag from a discount shop. They were pretty bedraggled, but also very cheap, so I figured I’d give them a shot. I planted the four miserable scraps of vegetation in a deep pot, formerly a catering urn, in my back garden, and waited to see what would happen.

Last summer, I didn’t get many strawberries. In fact, two of the plants died, and the other two only barely recovered enough to give me a couple of strawberries each. They did put out plenty of strong runners, though.

This year, it’s a very different picture. I estimate I’ve had about a kilogram of strawberries from those plants so far, and they show no signs of stopping any time soon. I haven’t really spent any significant time maintaining them – I pulled off some dead leaves and every once in a while I get out there and try to pull the snails and slugs off, but other than that they are left very much to their own devices. These aren’t your ordinary supermarket-variety, picked-whilst-unripe strawberries, either. They don’t always look nice, but they are sweet and succulent, firm and juicy.

I am absolutely delighted. Who wouldn’t be? I’ll give them some compost this autumn, maybe add some more soil as it’s getting a little low in the pot, and wait for next year’s bounty, but for now I am enjoying fresh, organic strawberries with breakfast most mornings. Delicious!