A foraging first

The change in climate means the seasons are less predictable. 

This Autumn is a 'mast year' where beech trees produced a super-crop. Other trees have joined them and nuts, seeds acorns and haws crunch beneath our hiking boots when we are out and about.

There are differing explanations for this abundance. Optimistics say the spring weather was ideal for setting fruit and nuts.

Pessimists say rising temperatures are stressing the trees and they feel themselves to be in danger, so attempt to perpetuate their genes by reproducing. 

Whichever it is, Nigel and I have benefited, at least in the short term. 

We noticed that squirrels, instead of burying merely the usual acorns and conkers in our garden were this year bringing us walnuts.

Then our friend Carys showed us a bowl of beautiful walnuts she had foraged near Oxford. 

We were eager to find some.

Finally, when out on a walk with Pascoe, we came upon a walnut tree and added handfuls of the delicious nuts to our pockets, already bulging with sweet chestnuts.

So for the first time we have a bowl of local walnuts. 

I only wish our pockets had been bigger.

And I hope the trees get a chance to rest and recover over winter.

foraging discipline

A rich variety of family illness and other crises has disrupted our autumn. I feel like I'm in a time travel movie, surfacing to find that another fortnight has somehow zipped past.

However foraging has anchored my feet to the ground once more. The best time for chestnuts and mushrooms is now.

Nigel and I were busy catching up on neglected chores.   Yet if we did not go now to the woods, we would miss the harvest.

We went up to Ashridge and sure enough the ground in the woods was scattered with sweet chestnut cases like green sea urchins. To save my fingers, I've learned to open them with my booted feet, and imagine this must be similar to what deer do with their hooves, as they too are clearly partial to the odd chestnut. 

I filled my pockets with the gleaming prizes until it was hard to walk. 

Meanwhile Nigel was stooping to gather puffballs. We've become cautious about mushrooms, but puffballs are completely unlike anything poisonous.

The chestnuts form part of our Christmas meal each year, but the puffballs were delicious right away with gnocchi. 

But even more than the food we gain, I value the therapeutic effect of foraging. After a morning in the rust and amber woods, rhythmically hunting and collecting, I was restored and ready to deal with whatever happens next.

Fit for foraging

Growing up in Cornwall, my parents didn’t like my foraging habits. 

Entranced by Richard Mabey’s ‘Food for free’ I would gather wild hazelnuts, chestnuts and blackberries.

However, Mum and Dad drew the line at leaves.  When I plucked sorrel from the hedgerow they would grow concerned I might make a mistake and poison myself.

This Easter Nigel and I rented a house in Falmouth and stayed there with Pascoe, Perran and Carenza and friends Jamie and Hannah.  We visited my parents, but they no longer have a say in what I pick and eat.

There is no more fragrant time in the Cornish hedgerows than April, and all of it was available to us to gather.  Each day, we came back with packets of greenery in our rucksacks.  Three-cornered leeks flavoured stews, wild garlic pesto (made by my old friend Jennie) made pasta delicious.  Blossoming alexanders provided flowers which we fried in tempura batter and leaves which I steamed for greens.  Wild sorrel and fennel added savour to salads.

And at the end of all this foraging and green eating, I was suffering from the runs… and completely unable to pinpoint exactly which herbs had given me them. 

So perhaps Mum and Dad were right after all.

She Stoops to Conquer

 

Every year, we go to glean chestnuts in the local woods.  I use them in all sorts of vegetarian and vegan dishes over the winter.  We realised they were ripe now and if we didn’t go soon, we would miss out.

I’d committed to a teaching conference at the weekend (on Zoom), so we couldn’t get away to the woods until almost dusk on Saturday.  We would have to be quick or the car park would shut with our car inside. 

We headed for the best spot and began combing the ground for the green spiny cases.  They always remind me of the land-bound version of sea-urchins.  But the only land-urchins we found had already been split open.

Many people and even more deer had been there before us.  The deer always leave the case spread out with the silky lining showing, like a pale star, completely cleaned of chestnuts. People do a less thorough job and leave small nuts behind.

Empty-handed, we rushed back to the car before we got locked in.

The following day, the conference again stretched into the afternoon, but when I got out, I remembered a new spot.  I’d discovered it a couple of weeks earlier, by the usual expedient of spotting other foragers and asking them what they were collecting. 

However, it was a long walk to get there and would there still be chestnuts?

In the green gloom of the woods, it turned out that there were.  Plenty of them.

And it allowed Nigel to make the annual repetition of one of his favourite puns.  As I bent to pick up a chestnut, ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘She stoops to conker.’

NB Despite Nigel's terrible pun, conkers ( AKA) Horse chestnuts are not edible. It was the delicious sweet chestnuts that I was collecting. 

 

Lend your support to the campaign to save Symondshyde Woods

http://www.save-symondshyde.co.uk/

Climate and Ecological Emergency Bill – please help your planet

Please follow the links below (which will take you swiftly and easily through to your MP’s email) and ask your MP to support the Climate and Ecological Emergency Bill which will be debated during this session of Parliament.

Find everything you need to take part here: https://digitalrebellion.uk/cee-bill

You can take foraging too far

At the weekend, we were walking by the River Ver, hoping to spot the turquoise gleam of a kingfisher.

As always, we carried with us a couple of old plastic bread bags and some rubber gloves, in case we want to pick nettles.  We had collected a little hedge mustard and were considering the young hawthorn leaves (in the past called ‘bread and cheese’ because they are edible and do not need to be cooked).

Just then I was surprised by a sudden sound of rushing water and noticed a manhole cover in the grass. 

“I suppose that must be a drain under there.  Yes.  Look. I can see bits of toilet paper from when it flooded over winter.”

“Step right away from the drain,” said Nigel, “I know toilet paper’s in shortage, but you can take foraging just too far.”

Nettle Soup

We are keen not to go to the shops until we absolutely must as that seems the most likely place to catch Corona Virus at the moment.

Foraging has been our hobby for many years and it is now coming into its own.

Yesterday I boiled up a load of young nettle leaves with some three-cornered leek that Nigel had weeded out of the garden, whizzed it up with lemon juice , olive oil and seasoning, added a can of lentils and made enough soup for three days.

Its colour is very green indeed, and of course it is green in other ways too.

I’ve also noticed bittercress growing as a weed in our garden (like mini watercress) and hedge mustard sprouting at the wayside – leaves to look forward to in a salad.

(Pics below)

Tip 1 Pick well back in the hedgerow so no dog has been there.

Tip 2 ALWAYS remove the garnish before eating the nettle soup!

Bittercress and three-cornered leek

Hedge mustard

Getting hold of fresh produce

We are trying to avoid the shops at the moment – it seems the most likely place to pick up Corona Virus.  However, it means we need to be imaginative about getting fresh produce.

I got the old pack of dried mung beans out of the back of the larder and am keeping some of them damp in a tray.  By the end of the week, they will have grown enough for me to use them as delicious bean sprouts.  

Soon I’ll plant some marrowfat peas (also from a pack in the larder) in a big dish outside and will quickly get pea sprouts - very fashionable in London restaurants.

Meantime, on my once-a-day excursion for exercise I am beginning to spot things I can forage – young nettle tops can be made into soup or eaten like spinach, while ramsons (wild garlic leaves) are nearly big enough to pick and cook with pasta or add flavour to stews or salads.

And in our little veg plot, I asked Nigel not to uproot last year’s chard and kale yet.  They may be a bit leggy, but they are still giving some green leaves.

Even if we didn't have the threat of Corona Virus, growing and foraging food still beats standing in a queue in Morrisons.

XR and the ants

At Greenbelt, Nigel, Pascoe and I took the opportunity to find out more about Extinction Rebellion (XR).  We don’t want our descendants to live in a world of famine, pollution and social breakdown. 

In order to get motivated to do something about Climate Change, we have to look squarely at the consequences.

And, it’s very frightening. 

So I also soothed myself by going on a nature walk run by Bob Gilbert, aimed at noticing the unnoticed (e.g. a beautiful willowherb flower that had taken root in the crook of a beech).  And by going on a foraging event led by Miles Irving where we learnt why we should gather ribwort, nettle seed and purple ground ivy.

But, the best indication of hope occurred just as we were packing up our tent.  I picked up the gas canister which had been on the ground only three days and discovered that in that brief time, yellow meadow ants  had nested inside its concave base and had filled this new chamber with their pupae.  I had to remove the canister, but we saw worker ants start to pick up the pupae and carry them to safety.

Given a chance, nature will triumph.  But we do have to ensure that Climate Change does not take our last chance away.

photo by Pascoe

Love Autumn!

chestnuts and a parasol toadstool

I heart Autumn.  I really do. 

In education Autumn represents the start of a new year.  Full of promises and excitement.

BUT MORE IMPORTANTLY

My birthday falls in Autumn.

The trees are all wearing MY colours.

And Nigel and I get to forage.

This year we had the added bonus of David and Carolyn coming to stay.  Carolyn wears Autumn colours too, otherwise I obviously wouldn’t have invited them.

The other really cool thing about them was that even after knowing us for twenty-five years, they still took our word for it that the big toadstools were edible and consumed my risotto without blenching.

They’ve gone home to the North East now.  I’m sure we’d hear if they’d suffered from our toadstools. 

Unless of course they’re seated paralysed and drooling in a layby on the M1.

But they won’t be.  Things never go wrong in Autumn!

Autumn’s so great.