What to Forage For in December

29/11/2015

As we descend into winter, there are gradually less and less wild plants you can find to eat. However, this doesn’t mean that nature’s larder is totally empty. Here are 5 things you can forage for in December:

Dandelions
These hardy ‘weeds’ can be used in salads or to make a variety of drinks. With leaves resembling lion teeth, dandelions can be found virtually anywhere, but most commonly in open fields.

Gorse
Gorse is almost constantly in flower, even in winter. Found on the Downs, in woods and wasteland, this spiky bush has vivid yellow flowers that can be eaten raw, in salads, or made into tea. If you close your eyes it tastes a bit like coconut.

Winter Chanterelles
A forager's delight that continues into December, particularly in milder areas. They’re easy to miss as their brown caps blend into the forest floor. Find them in woodland and on moss or decaying wood. The funnel shaped caps are 3-7cm across, with a distinctive yellowy stalk.

Wood Sorrel
Wood sorrel is extremely robust and whilst it carpets the forest in spring and summer, it can also be found in winter. Wood Sorrel looks like clover with three heart-shaped leaves at the top of a thin stalk (clover's leaves are round).

Garlic Mustard
Abundant in damp shaded areas, in hedgerows and at the edge of woods. This wild plant has a characteristic smell of garlic when crushed. The leaves make ideal sandwich fillers, and salad greens, and if chopped and mixed with olive oil, make a good salad dressing.

The Spirit of Nature: a meditative journey into wilderness philosophy

17/11/2015

It's autumn. We're about to embark on the Spirit of Nature, our latest workshop.

It's a Sunday morning in late autumn. The weather is clear and bright. We gather at a new indoors venue in the dip between Newtimber Hill and Devil's Dyke, for the Spirit of Nature session. There are 20 of us.

By popular demand, Robert is running this shamanic journey class, but he has reservations. "The techniques I'm about to show you come from the Lipan Apache tradition, handed down by Grandfather (Stalking Wolf).

"I usually teach this class as part of a longer course that includes practical skills, to make it more grounded," he says. But due to popular demand, he's teaching it for us anyway.

[Click the Read More link to see more]

20 Things I Learned on a Wild Food Walk

11/11/2015

Last weekend I went on a Wild Medicine, Wild Food walk with ethnobotanist and leading UK forager, Robin Harford, and top medical herbalist Alex Laird. The theme from the day was clear: nature is designed to help us thrive and function.

Here's what I learned about the wild plants we came across: what they're good for and how to eat them:

1. Dandelion is good for warts
Dandelion leaf is loaded with beneficial antioxidants that produce a range of positive effects for human health, including protection for the cardiovascular system. "Twenty times the antioxidants than any green leaf you get in a supermarket," says Alex.
The latex in the leaves (the white juice that oozes out when you break one off) is antiviral, and good for getting rid of warts.

[Click the Read More link to see more]

Can You Pass this Wild Berry Challenge?

7/11/2015

Do you know what these wild UK berries are, and would you eat them?

At Our Edible Landscape, the most recent School of the Wild event, facilitator Milly set us the Wild Berry Challenge, so we're putting the challenge to you. Identify the berries below, and decide if you'd eat them. There are no prizes but next time you're out for a walk, you might be able to identify a few more wild foods, and a few more not to eat!

(All the berries below had been foraged from an area around the site that morning, scroll down/click read more for the answers... if you need them!)

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How Eating Nettle Seeds Can Help With Stress

3/11/2015

Fresh green stinging nettle seeds growing on the plant

Nettles are a superfood, and nettle seeds can help with stress. Here's how to use them, or you could find out more at one our of outdoor team building programmes.

It's September and we're at our workshop on Wild Food and Medicine, led by bushcraft and woodcraft teacher Jonathon Huet.

We're a large group, and as we wander along the forest paths, Jonathon points out plants that are good to eat or can be used as medicine, like chickweed, elderberries and the like. I'm at the back, chatting to herbalist Lucinda Warner who tells me that nettle seeds are good for adrenal stress.

I'm keen to hear more, as I've been feeling pretty stressed out lately...
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Finding Food for Free in Wild Nature

3/11/2015

Cranesbill, sorrel, hawthorn, sloes, yarrow, wild marjoram

Today we meet round the fire, feeling the wind, and the few drops of rain on our faces. It's our time to reflect, and to open the senses to what's around us.

We talk about autumn, the time of gathering, and how we feel about the season. The light is changing, the air feels different. Winter is coming.

Some are looking forward to getting cosy indoors. Some need to stay busy to not be overwhelmed by the dark days.

The exercise we're given is to go off into the wood and to awaken the senses: sight, touch, smell, taste... [Click the Read More link to see more]