food for free...

has anyone here foraged for food..??

close to where i live I'm able to get a full range of stuff like elderflowers, blackberries etc...

I've got a few places where i'm waiting for them to ripen..

anyone else do this?

just ordered this book too - http://www.haworth-village.org.uk/c...ed.cgi?Operation=ItemLookup&ItemId=0002198657

 

Have certainly picked a great many wild blackberries. Where my parents live they grow by the millions. We even know the character of each patch (one is a sort of baseline, one patch has smaller, tart berries, one has much larger, juicier and very sweet berries, etc)

 

thats cool - I know a patch that is probably due in the next few weeks... there was also a field full of elderflowers when I was there in June - when I told my lady about this she mentioned that we should go - but it was all harvested!! and the plants that we've seen around since then are dead - not sure if this is because they're out of season or due to the hot weather..?

 

Wild Food by Roger Phillips is a great buy as well.
I used to do food for free walks and talks at country parks around N. Ireland.

You should try Elder Flower fritters mmmmmm and Sloe Gin mmmmmm.

 

Blackberries are good this year, there is also a fair amount of sloes around coming on, get them picked at first frost, if it appears first frost is not coming pick them then freeze them, then defrost them, split them and plonk in gin with a dash of sugar, leave for one year. Yum Yum.

 

Loads of blackberries round my way are ripe already. Spotted some Damsons as well when out walking near my Mums gaff on the edge of the Cotswold escarpment, not ready yet though. Also something I've never tried......freshwater crayfish! Took a walk round a local resevoir a couple of days ago and there were crayfish claws around where seagulls or whatever had caught them - they were really big, as big as large crab claws. Supposed to be well tasty! Now, how do you catch them?

...and don't forget it's nearing mushroom time.......

Allotments are great for foraging too, there's always loads of food in them, tee hee, best after dark though .

 

Blackberries yes. We've made wild rosehip syrup before now. Wild garlic is very good and abundant around May time (the flowers and stalks) and the bulbs later. And Mackerel fishing in season (Mackerels are dumb and you don't need to be an ace angler) and mussels, so long as its rocks by a nice clean beach (most of cornwall is fine for them). Wild Sorrel's good in salad as of course are humble dandelion leaves. And Nettles of course are an excellent alternative to spinach.

 

You make a mesh cage with a sort of funnel end. they can climb in but not out (you can buy them, but you could make one with some chicken wire or the rigt sort of fencing). Weight it and drop it into the river by the bank and come back a day later. bate it with a bit of dead mackerel or something

PS. They are very tasty so long as you get em from a river with a bit of flow. If they've been living in fairly still water they might be a bit muddy tasting

 

Can you do that without a license?

 

my lady and I went walking on sunday and saw a spot where there was elderberries and some blackberries so we decided to pop back down there last night...

when we got there we discovered that the blackberries had gone!
anyway, we continues to walk to a more secluded spot and managed to fill 1 and 2/3s of those cardboard punnets (that you get mushrooms in!) with elderflowers and blackberries within an hour....job well done I say!

 

there was an old geezer on local TV who eats roadkill - squirrels, hedgehogs, dogs, you name it... he said that even if it's gone greenish, as long as it's cooked for a long time it's fine to eat....

 

yeah, I seen a program about that a short while ago...Hmm...not sure if I'd do that like!

we went out again last night and in this field we saw about 20 varieties of mushrooms...wow..!! no magic ones tho...sigh...

 

does anybody else plant up the back garden for fruit?

I get apples and plums at the moment. Next is a herb garden.

 

no - but my grans old house she used to have an apple tree, raspberries, strwaberries, gooseberries and mint!

I've gota back yard but we're trying to grow a few herbs tho...

 

We've got two eating apple trees in the back garden. We had stacks of strawberries and raspberries from the allotment, in fact so many raspberries that a lot went to waste . We also have a 'herb corner'. I also just discovered a plum tree where I work once a week, so my fruit bowl is full at the mo'!

If you like growing your own stuff then you should really check out whether there's allotment space near you, we only pay about 15 or 20 quid a year for ours and it's quite big (bigger than our garden)! It's also absolutely brilliant if you have kids, my two love being over there rooting around for bugs and getting covered in dirt...and they learn stacks about plants and wildlife. Quite a lot of work of course, but the food....heaven....and we're even 100% organic, no chemicals alowed, lots of bloody caterpillars.

 

My next door neighbour has a bramley apple orchard and quite a few branches overhang my garden.... strangely they never see much crop from those branches.... has anyone noticed the darker evenings :JPS:

 

yeah, most of the places I go seem to be on farmers land...not sure what would happen if a farmer came along and I had a full punnet!

edit - whilst they're on farmers land(?) - I'm always public footpaths or near by...

 

As my family are from Haworth (where you got your book) I took a gander at the site and found some grand pictures of local wildlife...http://www.haworth-village.org.uk/wallpaper/wallpaper.asp

smashing, great, super

 

Yep!

Blackcurrants, redcurrants, gooseberries, blackberries and raspberries.

I've had a bumper crop of raspberries this year. For some reason the birds don't eat them. I have to get in quick for all the others

 

yeah, we went out again last night and got a load of blackberries - almost a cardboard punnet full!

I also discovered about 15 sloeberry shrubs...yeeha!
will make a load of sloe gin and wine...