Bristly oxtongue cooking on the fire. Sounds rough, tastes delicious.

28/4/2017

Bristly oxtongue tempura, cooked over open fire.

Bristly oxtongue is often treated as a weed. The spiny tongue-shaped leaves look and feel like sandpaper, but when young they are juicy and milky, with a soft bitter flavor.

Ingredients for the tempura batter
Flour
Sparkling water

Method
Dip bristly oxtongue leaves into batter.
Drop into hot vegetable oil.
Fry til golden brown all over.

with @michael.cutting.forager

#campfirecooking #wildcooking #wildfoods #wildfoodlove #foraging #stanmerpark #brighton

Hogweed tempura cooking on an open fire

26/4/2017

#forage #foraging #stanmerpark #wildfood #rewildyourlife #wildfoodisdelicious #wildfoodlove #wildfoods #wildcooking #campfirecooking

The young shoots of hogweed are tender and delicious

25/4/2017

Just make sure it's not the giant kind!

#forage #foraging #wildfood #stanmerpark #wildtime #rewildyourlife

How to forage with your senses

24/4/2017

Mike the forager shows the difference between greater plantain and ribwort plantain (plantago) - both are useful medicinal and edible wild plants.

Tastes a bit shroomy.

#rewildyourlife #natureisamazing #wildherbs

Mike shows us ground ivy then we gather some for the salad and to make tea

23/4/2017

Ground ivy is aromatic and warming. The purple flowers make it easy to spot just now.

#forage #stanmerpark #aromatic #wildherbs #natureisamazing #smellsamazing #wildtime #rewildyou

Making a digestive bitters tincture round the fire

20/4/2017

Alice Bettany guides us in making this herbal tincture.

Plantain, cleavers, silver birch, dandelion, burdock root, red clover, cacao and vodka. Ready in six weeks.

spring #herbalmedicine #wildherbs #wildremedy #natureisamazing #natu

Ladybird on nettles

20/4/2017

#southdowns #breakfastwalk #spring

10 Wild Plants that are Good for your Health this Spring

17/4/2017

In Spring, when you’re still shaking off winter and haven't quite fully moved on from the roast potatoes to salads, you need food, tonics, and remedies that support your body's kick start.

It's no coincidence that Nature provides just the medicine you need, at just the right time,

These 10 bitter wild plants are part of Spring's natural medicine chest that are just what your body needs to throw off winter's sluggishness: they're pungent, spicy, warming and cleansing to get your system going again, says herbalist Alice Bettany at our Foraging and Health class last week.

[all pics and info from our Foraging and Health class in April 2017]

Night walk. Before it got proper dark.

16/4/2017

"To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark go dark.
Go without sight and find that the dark too blooms and sings
and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings."
Wendell Berry

The night walk begins.

16/4/2017

@natureschildling leads us silently upward from Glynde towards a dark valley where the stillness and the mysteries of the night and the land draw us closer.

Fire keeper @the_barefoot_forge makes ready the tea and a welcome beacon for our arrival in Lewes.

Settling into the soft stillness of the dark on a night walk

13/4/2017

Double checking the route for Saturday's night walk over the Downs with @natureschildling and Jake the Farrier. A few places left if you'd like to join us.

#schoolofthewild #wildtime #nightwalk #southdowns

Prepping plantain, the first aid herb, for the digestive bitters tincture with @sacred_seeds

12/4/2017

#foraging #wildmedicine #stanmerpark #spring #digestives #wildherbs #naturesmedicine #naturecure #wildtime #schoolofthewild

Dandelion and burdock root. Making a wild herbal remedy

11/4/2017

#bitters #digestives #nourishing #stanmerpark #wildmedicine #foraging

It's April and the May is out in King's Cross. In Brighton yesterday, it's not out yet.

11/4/2017

#hawthorn #maytree #headyscent

Stunning day with @sacred_seeds learning about wild herbal plants and their uses. Like this cow slip.

9/4/2017

#wildherbalism #nourishing #sussex #foraging #wildmedicine #spring #sun

This is what happened on a Medicine Walk at Devil's Dyke, Sussex

9/4/2017

Venue: Saddlescombe Farm, E. Sussex
Date: Sunday 5th February 2017
Time: 9.30am to 5.30pm
Facilitator: Rebecca Card
No of participants: 7

Hypothesis:
When you create a ceremony with intention, something mysterious happens and the things that occur in the ceremony reflect what's happening on the inside, and are symbolic - call it synchronicity, the Wyrd, the Mystery - which is helpful, nourishing and gives rise to useful insight.

Method:
Set up an altar, sit around it in a circle. Everyone shares their personal story, authentic as you are able is helpful. Listen to each other, then go off for a solo walk in nature, choosing our own threshold. On returning, share story of what happened, reflections from the guide and other participants clarify and embed what happened.

Wood anemone carpet on the forest floor

8/4/2017

#springflowers #markstakescommon #woods #forest #sussex #nourishing

Foraging, Medicine Walks and Night Time Journeys

5/4/2017

I was sitting on Dartmoor last weekend, as part of a Medicine Walk, a solo walking ceremony that turns the land into a mirror for your inner world.

The weather on Dartmoor was gorgeous. The flowering gorse and gnarly hawthorn trees reminding me of the Downs, with similar stunning views across green fields towards the coast.

I’ve got a bit hooked on Medicine Walks after being introduced to them by Rebecca Card, and then running them with her on the Downs around Devil’s Dyke.

I have no idea how they work, but something unexpected, insightful and magical always seems to happen to me: from finding special trees and features in the landscape that resonate with themes in my life, to strange synchronicities that have made me laugh out loud.

(Read more about Medicine Walks here. We’re doing another one in June if you fancy it.)

It’d been a long journey to get to Dartmoor from Brighton. I’d used the car's satnav and when I arrived I didn’t really have a sense of where I was until I spotted navel wort - a wild edible plant that I discovered the last time I was in Devon.

Navel wort grows in the walls of Devon’s lanes - it’s crunchy and refreshing, a bit like a cross between bean sprouts and cucumber… I ate some as I started walking and it instantly made me happy, and I felt more plugged in to where I was.

Navel wort doesn’t grow in Sussex, but there are lots of other great edible wild plants that are greening the hedgerows and lanes of Sussex at the moment.

If you’re interested in learning how to find them, we’re running Forage with your Senses with Mike Cutting in Stanmer Park on April 23rd. You’ll learn to identify hogweed, celandine, plantain, cleavers... and you’ll get to taste some of them around the fire afterwards too.

Before then I’m also really looking forward to Befriending the Dark on Sat April 15th. It’s a guided night walk without torches over the South Downs, with Caroline Whiteman.

I walked the route with Caroline a few months ago. It was enchanting. Away from the busyness of the world, and in the darkness, you really tune into the stillness of the night, the tastes and smells in the air, the touch of the ground under your feet, and feel of breeze the on your skin... I can’t wait.

Maybe see you there.

Nigel x

Fieldwork