How do we agree best foraging practice, and how might we benchmark and accredit it? Mark Williams explores some of the issues and possible ways forward raised by a recent research.
Jointly funded funded by The Association of Foragers and NatureScot (Scotland's public nature agency), a report entitled "Wild Food Accreditation Scheme - Scoping Report" was published in July 2022.
Written by AoF members, the report explores current opportunities and challenges around foraging for both personal and commercial use in the UK, and outlines possible ways forward for promoting and, where helpful, accrediting responsible, safe wild harvesting.
You can read the report here: Wild Food Accreditation Scheme Report_Final-2.pdf
After reviewing research and discussing current tensions and opportunities around foraging, the report identifies several key tenets that should underpin a Wild Food Accreditation Scheme:
Based on these principles, the report proposes a three-tier accreditation structure overseen by a steering group made up of interest groups including foragers, land managers, conservation organisations, food standards, and plant, fungi and seaweed specialists.
The intention of this report is to reach out to individuals, organisations, businesses and landowners with an interest in wild food and foraging to find common ground in order promote the benefits of foraging while minimising any risks or negative impacts, by identifying, benchmarking and, accrediting best practice.
The AoF welcomes any feedback, thoughts, comment and applications to stand on the steering group from anyone who has read the report and has an interest in the ideas and concepts it raises. In particular, insights from the following groups would be most welcome:
Please note:
Please email foragersassociation@gmail.com if you'd like to contribute.
You can read about the context of the report and its intentions by one of its authors here: https://gallowaywildfoods.com/accrediting-foraging-and-wild-food-in-the-uk/
Image ©Mark Williams GallowayWildFoods.com
A journey to sweet tastes of the wild shared by Rachel Lambert
It was back in spring 2010 when it all started – the soil and days were warming up, enabling the plants, my energy and ideas to flow better. I’d been out picking nettle tops that morning. It was a gloriously crisp morning and spending time outdoors picking from a patch of dark green, vibrant leaves felt like a simple kind of heaven for me.
Back in my kitchen I started to wonder about putting nettles in a cake. I’d come across ‘green spinach cake’ and thought it was worth playing with my own version. A couple of hours later I had a finished Nettle and Honey Cake that looked and tasted great! Hmm, what if, I thought, I could create a whole book combining wild ingredients and sweet treats?
‘There’s something about the combination of foraging and sweetness that has always been irresistible to me. I was brought up on homemade cooking, sweet baking and wild adventures. ...Homemade cordials, cakes or treats were a daily affair, punctuating the day and the end of meals; thus my ‘naturally’ sweet tooth was shaped.’ (Extract from Wild and Sweet – forage and make 101 seasonal desserts by Rachel Lambert, p8)
Fast-forward 12 years and in my hands I hold a creation I’m very proud of. It’s the book I’ve always wanted to write and the angle on foraging that comes most naturally to me.
Wild and Sweet is a book that travels through the seasons: Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter using weeds from each season and making desserts and sweet treats from them. Leaves, shoots, flowers, seeds, fruits, berries and roots all get utilised to create over 100 dishes. From cordials to cookies, tarts to tray bakes, ice creams to cocktails and sorbets to sponges.
Each plant is described in detail alongside a clear, plant portrait for easy identification. Subheadings here include: main identifying features, when to forage, where to forage, how to forage, cautions and other notable varieties.
Just covering 20 wild plants widely available across Europe, North America, Australia, New Zealand, Asia and Africa. It offers inspiration to the well-seasoned forager and the newbie. Actually, I carefully chose the range of plants so the book could be used as worldwide as possible.
‘As a cook rather than a chef, I delight in uncomplicated puddings that show off wild aromas – either subtly or boldly. Not only do foraged ingredients bring a sense of adventure and colour to the table, they bring a range of forgotten flavours too.’ (Extract from Wild and Sweet – forage and make 101 seasonal desserts by Rachel Lambert, p10)
Wild and Sweet can be ordered in your local bookshop, if they don't already have it on the shelf, or bought direct from Rachel's website or from Hoxton Mini Press.
Wild and Sweet is illustrated with photos by Elliot White
Foraging teacher and Association of Foragers member Mark Williams of Galloway Wild Foods explores the growing popularity of wild garlic and suggests some strategies to help keep it abundant.
This article focuses on considerate harvesting of wild garlic. For more detailed information around identification, look-alikes, nutrition and culinary uses, see this article: https://gallowaywildfoods.com/wild-garlicramsons-edibility-identification-distribution/
Wild garlic (Allium ursinum) has become a poster-plant for the resurgent interest in foraging in recent years. It isn’t hard to work out why: it is straightforward to identify, very good for you, delicious, versatile in the kitchen, and is abundant across much of the UK and Europe.
It has become the star of thousands of social media posts, foraging websites, cookery columns, and even TV shows, moving it from the relatively niche world of foraging into the mainstream. Everyone is enthusiastic: even conservation organisations are sharing recipes for it and encouraging people to connect with its charms.
In doing so there tends to be a strong focus on its abundance and deliciousness, but not usually much detail on how to harvest it sensitively. Social media posts are often in such a hurry to show how pretty and delicious wild garlic can be that they forget to share more intimate messages around its ecology, and how to forage it in ways that are sensitive to the plant, its environment, and other creatures - including other foragers - that enjoy or rely upon it. Foraging websites do a little better, often mentioning that it should be “foraged responsibly”, but rarely spelling out how that might best be done. I often get asked on my guided walks about what is an appropriate amount to harvest.
The green blanket of wild garlic that covers so many UK woodlands in spring can give the impression of endless abundance that no amount of harvesting will make a dent in. Fishermen used to feel similarly about herring and cod...right up until they were gone!
Its easy - perhaps too easy - to grab a clump of wild garlic and crop it off at the base, repeat, and in so doing fill a carrier bag in a few minutes. Several bag-fulls later and there’s a bit of a bald patch on the forest floor…but no problem - it will be back just fine next year….won’t it?
The principles of the Association of Foragers recognise that each species that is foraged and each location in which foraging takes place require their own set of skills and insights. In this respect it is impractical and undesirable to impose a comprehensive set of rules around foraging. But that doesn't mean its not important to understand the deeper ecological significance of individual species: foraging is as much about learning and cherishing as it is about harvesting and eating.
Below I’ve outlined a few of the less discussed ecological roles of wild garlic, and a little about its life cycle and resilience. I’ve added some thoughts on why and how to considerately harvest it so that, as it grows ever more popular, it won’t suffer from its popularity. I have no doubt that most of these points will be second nature to many foragers, but I hope its helpful to collect them in one place.
Wild garlic is so prolific, and most foragers so considerate, that we are a very long way from there being any issues around general “over- harvesting” of wild garlic in the UK. It would be good to keep it that way. On more local levels, especially near large urban populations, or where it is being harvested commercially, inconsiderate wild garlic harvesting year-on-year has the potential to significantly diminish wild garlic colonies.
Ecology
Wild garlic is allelopathic, which means it actively deters rival herbaceous plants by releasing volatile compounds which inhibit seed germination and plant growth. This is how colonies can come to dominate large areas of woodland. Its worth noting that the Royal Horticultural Society see's wild garlic mostly as a "weed plant" and much of its web page on the subject is dedicated to ways of controlling, or getting rid of it!
Although these colonies can seem endlessly abundant where they are well established, other species have evolved to rely on that abundance. Wild garlic is grazed by bears and wild boar in continental Europe but in the UK it is of food value primarily to insects, through its nectar. The compounds that make it so attractive as food to humans have actually evolved to deter insects and herbivores from grazing its leaves.
The flowers are pollinated by bees, moths, hoverflies, beetles and other flying insects. Wild garlic is the primary larval host plant for a specialised hoverfly, ramsons hoverfly (Portevinia maculata), which overwinter in the bulbs.
Wild garlic is native to the UK and used as an ancient woodland indicator species This is not to say that its presence alone indicates that a woodland is ancient, but its definitely a sign good of well established damp woods and a rich humus layer.
Wild garlic is a bulbous perennial that reproduces through both bulbs and seeds. Each plant has both male and female organs. It can take as much as 4 years for plants to reach reproductive maturity. Vegetative self-propagation through the production of new bulbs can be responsible for the majority of its reproduction, with seeds being less important, though reproductive strategies appear to vary significantly between localised populations.
It completes most of its growth cycle before the tree canopy opens, and can’t tolerate sustained bright sunlight.
Considerate Harvesting Strategies
If cut, wild garlic will grow back the following year, but repeated cutting year-on-year will weaken its bulbs and eventually erode once dense colonies.
Spend time getting to know your local patches, and spread your picking around different colonies within a season, and from year-to-year. Think of harvesting as thinning abundance, never stripping large areas and gathering from the middle, rather than the edges, of colonies. A good way to judge the impact of your harvesting is to look back over the area you have been harvesting from. If you can’t tell you have been there, you are doing it well.
Resist cutting whole clumps of wild garlic at the base. By thinning rather than clear-felling clumps you will leave plenty of leaves to nourish bulbs, and flower stalks to set seed. This sort of mindful harvesting is not only easier on the plant and your conscience, but helps to keep you safe - leaves of seriously toxic plants such as dog mercury, foxglove or lilly of the valley can easily sneak in to hastily grabbed harvests.
The image above shows a single - and potentially fatal - foxglove leaf, mixed in with a bundle of wild garlic leaves. While these plants aren't particularly similar, hasty or careless harvesting could result in serious illness or even death.
Consider that other foragers may be visiting a location too, and try to develop a sensitivity for which locations are being hit hard, and avoid them.
Tread lightly, especially early in the season, when a lot of shoots may not yet have broken through leaf litter.
Don’t uproot wild garlic – this will definitely and rapidly undermine future populations, and the bulb isn’t really worth eating anyway.
If you are gathering the green seed pods, leave plenty to mature on the plant and return when they are black and ready to fall to spread some in likely habitats further afield (they aren’t reproductively viable at the green stage, and need to mature on the stem).
If you think wild garlic might be on the retreat in your locale, consider seeking out wild leeks instead. Few-flowered leek (Allium paradoxum) and three-cornered leek (Allium triquertum) are both considered to be problematic non-native invasive species in the UK, and wild garlic is one of the species they can displace. You needn’t worry about taking too many wild leeks, and pulling them up root-and-all is actually helpful - but be extremely careful not to introduce them to new locations by putting their seeds or bulbs in your compost.
Giving Back
Foraging done well is reciprocal, not exploitative.
It is possible to promote new wild garlic colonies by dividing a few wild garlic clumps (bulbs intact) from the middle of thriving colonies and introducing them elsewhere. This is not an operation to perform without careful consideration though: you need the land-owner's permission to uproot a plant, and the presence of wild garlic in a new location may not necessarily be a good thing for that locale - you should be very careful to consult any existing conservation management plans. More straightforward would be to introduce wild garlic to your garden, though bear in mind its allelopathic tendencies - you may end up struggling to control it!
Habitat loss and degradation is by far the biggest threat to plants such as wild garlic. You can look after your local patch through small acts of loving stewardship such as litter-picking, and work to protect existing woodland habitats (over zealous drainage and “tidying” up of fallen leaves may be problematic for wild garlic), or better still, supporting community woodlands.
Try to forage as close to home as possible, and consider fellow foragers. Should you bump into other wild garlic harvesters, remember that “your” patch may very well have been “their” patch long before you found it! Most foragers are friendly, but can be initially territorial until they trust the intentions of new arrivals!
Every forager should be an ambassador for foraging. Be ready to gently demonstrate your caring relationship with the things you forage to those that may be curious or suspicious. Should you notice inconsiderate harvesting, try gentle reeducation through example and by politely discussing your relationship with wild garlic beyond the kitchen. Lecturing rarely works - in person or on social media! Use your platforms to spread rounded sensitive insights into the plants you forage.
All images ©GallowayWildFoods.com
Perhaps in January we notice our evergreens more, so lets take a look at Juniper with this excerpt from AoF member Lukasz Luczaj's book on Foraging in Eastern Europe..
Common Juniper Juniperus communis L. Folk name: jałowiec
Juniper is a common coniferous shrub, found mainly on barren soils, usually in pastures, animals do not eat its spiny branches. It is highly light-dependent – the species is now becoming rarer as a result of the disappearance of grazing, as other more quickly growing woodland species grow past it and leave it in shadow.
In Poland the sweet fleshy juniper pseudo-berries are commonly used for food purposes. They are still available in shops, used as a seasoning for bigos (stewed meat and sauerkraut dish usually served in winter), juniper sausage and other meats (comp. Paluch 1984).
Another use of the berries is the preparation of juniper “beer”. In its most primitive form this consisted of grated berries with yeast, but as far as possible it was strengthened with honey or sugar, sometimes hop cones were also added (Moszyński 1929; Chętnik 1936; Malicki 1971; Bohdanowicz 1996; PEA2; PEA6). In the twentieth century the tradition of preparing this beer nearly disappeared. It was the most lively in the Kurpie and Podlasie regions, but it had originally covered almost the whole of Northern Poland, including a part of Pomorze. In the Kurpie region, at the turn of the XX and XXI centuries, the tradition of making this brew, known there as psiwo kozicowe, was significantly revived by tourist interest. It is now made by a few local producers (Madej et al. 2014). Wine was also occasionally made from the cone-berries of juniper in Southern Poland (Szromba-Rysowa 1966; Bohdanowicz 1996), and more often a kind of vodka (Bohdanowicz, PEA VII:361). Chętnik mentions that children ate large amounts of them in the Kurpie area (Chętnik 1936). As Dydowiczowa (1964) mentions, up until the eighteenth century juniper cone-berries were one of the products with which peasants paid taxes.
Juniper gives beer its characteristic flavor and it also probably acquires bacteriostatic properties during the fermentation process. The berries also contain sugar, which was important in the early twentieth century and earlier, when sugar was expensive. Juniper beer was local produce made by poor peasants. Although they made it mainly for festive occasions and weddings, they often could not afford any sugar at all. Thus the proportion of juniper berries, sugar and honey differed depending on the availability of the ingredients. Sometimes the beer was made without any sugar or honey. Nowadays the expensive ingredient is not sugar but juniper berries. Their collection is long, and there are fewer juniper bushes. The typical proportion of ingredients given by people from Kurpie and Podlasie is: 20 l of water, 1 kg of juniper berries (or more if possible), 2 – 2.5 kg of sugar and/or honey (these two ingredients can be added in various proportions), 2 handfuls of hops and 20-60 g yeast. The berries are mashed in a wooden mortar (now also in plastic buckets), mixed with water and left overnight or boiled for 2 hours. Then they are strained through a cloth to separate the seeds and resin. Only the strained liquid is used in the fermentation as the resin is harmful. The liquid is mixed with sugar and honey, heated and cooled. Then the yeast is added. Hops are boiled with little water and an extract from it is added to the container with other ingredients, or is added to juniper berries immediately. Nowadays the beer is fermented in 1.5 l plastic fizzy drink bottles. Originally it was brewed in wooden containers. Psiwo is ready after three days and can be kept in a cool place for another few weeks.
The tradition of fermenting juniper berries in Poland is most likely a very ancient one. A team of researchers, including the famous historian of alcohol Patrick McGovern (McGovern et al. 2013), found remnants of a mixed fermented beverage in three sites from Denmark. The finding dated from 1500 to 200 B.C. Thus the drink may have a history of over three thousand years! It is quite possible that the tradition of juniper beer making in northern Europe has continued uninterrupted since those times. For details of the facts cited in this chapter, see my (and my colleagues’) paper (Madej et al. 2014).
Courtney Tyler of Hips and Haws Wildcrafts shares her enthusiasm for all aspects of one of our most recognisable mushrooms, the fly agaric.
As a forager, like you perhaps, my interest in mushrooms lies most in those that are edible, deadible, and medicinal. And certainly those of entheogenic properties pique my interests. And of course, the Fly Agaric is all of these things.
Kidney beans, olives, coffee beans, chocolate, cashew nuts, puffer fish, raw chicken, raw pork, acorns, yew arils—there are so many foods that we have become accustomed to preparing in a special way to make them edible. Many edible mushrooms are avoided, as we are often not presented with information on which steps of soaking, salting, high heat or drying can render something toxic, unpalatable or indigestible into something edible and delicious. I particularly enjoy Geoff Dann’s Edible Mushrooms of UK and Ireland book as he finally presents one with the preparation methods to render many often avoided species edible.
The spectrum of edibility is something I really enjoy discussing with people on my mushroom walks. The newbies most pressing question: “what is this and is it edible?” can irk a bit as it’s oft repeated thousands of times on any foray or mushroom ID Facebook group. As you know, the answer is often much more complex than a simple yes or no. The species, the age, the condition, the growth of secondary moulds, the person’s constitution/ personal intolerances/ tolerances, allergies, the cooking or preparation methods: salting, boiling, application of high heat, quantity consumed, alcohol consumption etc. all can play a role in determining a delicious dinner from one that has you in the grips of gastrointestinal distress or worse.
Having said all this it is indisputable that fly agaric (Amanita muscaria) does contain toxins. However muscarine and ibutenic acid are not deadly in the quantity that AM contains and can easily be removed.
On the other side, there’s simplicity here too: does a substance contain toxins that are generally dangerous or toxic or indigestible to humans? The death cap is an example something that no matter your preparation methods contains toxins that cannot be neutralized. In contrast the fly agaric in which the toxins can easily be detoxified and the mushroom consumed (and enjoyed).
In February 2020 at the AoF Annual Meet Up I was excited to talk with Fergus Drennan about his experience and experimentation with this very fly agaric. Our conversation grew from words into an event celebrating this mushroom. We explore folklore, mythology and traditional use of fly agaric around the world and separate the facts from fiction. We learn about the herbal medicine uses of its tincture. Of course while considering fly agaric as food we also taste it. Some dishes served up at our last event included: fly agaric and sea buckthorn vegan ice cream, sweet fly agaric sushi rolls with coconut, pumpkin hummus with fly agaric, candied fly agaric crisps, and we also pickled and fermented fly agaric as a group.
A brief note on this year's gathering of foragers, written by AoF member Daniel Butler.
Since at least 2019 it has been traditional to end our meetings with a road kill haggis. Normally this vaguely coincides with Burns Night, but this year we were almost half a year out. With meetings limited by pandemic legislation our annual meet up was also restricted in number. While we successfully held our Annual General Meeting online for official business, we were delighted to be able to gather for an abridged Annual Meet Up. It is wonderful spend time with old friends, but it is possibly even better to forge new friendships and the newcomers are all – without question – great additions to the Association.
This year our events team—Mark, Leanne, Lucy, Lucia, and Amy—arranged three days in early June at AoF members Ben and Deb’s wild camping rewilding site near Kendal in the Southern Lakes. With members from across Britain and Ireland and a growing number of international members our Annual Meet Ups take place in a different location each year. Previously we have got together on the Isle of Purbeck in Dorset where seaweed was a star of the agenda, a castle in Scotland, and a farm in Wales.
At Oak Howe we were totally off-grid. A river running through the site provided bathing facilities. Its chilly water made an extremely effective booze fridge—an essential since our members bring equal knowledge and creativity to drinks as we do to food.
Pizzas topped with wild produce was our first meal of the meeting, and a natural introduction to our host Ben’s workshop on cob pizza oven construction. Chicken of the woods and samphire were turned into a vegetarian version of Thai Green Curry by Lisa, whose mushroom expertise is not just taxonomy but also how to use them in the kitchen. Midsummer being less ideal for road kill haggis than January’s cool days and natural refrigeration the bulk of its ingredients were shop-bought. Yet it was still presented with authentic ceremony by Mark and his excellent rendition of ‘Address to a Haggis’.
Eating and drinking foraged ingredients were interspersed with workshops. Monica, a herbalist who runs a Lyme Disease clinic, gave a talk on ticks and Lyme’s Disease. Craig provided a detailed overview on acorns, making the work of leaching their tannins a reasonable trade for their edible merits. Deb led a tour around the site where wild species are supplemented with lightly gardened areas containing useful species that have been introduced to expand the site’s natural medicinal and kitchen cabinet.
Details for the 2022 Annual Meet Up will be circulated to members by November 2021.
After exploring the natural world in ‘Wild Ruins’, ‘ The Self-Sufficientish Bible’, and now foraging in ‘Where the Wild Things Grow’ we talked with Association of Foragers (AoF) member Dave Hamilton to understand the thread that connects his books.
Why divide ‘Where the Wild Things Grow’ into four main sections: man-made, rural, woodland, and water?
“Ordering things by where they grow helps with identification, and planning days out. Places direct how people forage and how they look for things. I’ve always done urban foraging so including that (within man-made) was important to me. ”
When and why did you join the AoF?
“I only became aware of the AoF recently. With this book, like the wild ruins books, I really wanted to travel, and to meet people foraging and feed that into the book. Then the pandemic happened so this become became more personal memoir than about other people and their foraging.”
How did you navigate the different audiences, experts and beginners, interested in reading foraging books?
“Kirty Topiwala, my editor, was really good at deciding what should go in and suggesting ways avenues to take. She wasn’t a forager and helped to construct the book as accessible for someone without the lexicon of foraging. Kirty also encouraged ethnobotanical details in the book. For example Fat Hen (Chenopodium album) grows here in farm and wasteland. It also grew in Russian gulags, where for prisoners it was a valuable addition to their impoverished diet as it was overlooked by prison guards as a weed. Through plants like this we see bits of humanity even in horrible places like the gulag. So fat hen was a secret plant, though growing in plain sight, that people ate. While nerdy details are in the book it is also pragmatic— things like a section on plants that grow in walls. While it might seem obvious to people who know those plants it isn’t obvious if you are getting to these plants and their habits. And while extolling pine needle tea, it is also handy to point out that they are often out of reach, unless you time visiting your local pines for the aftermath of high winds that break branches, which fall to the ground bringing fresh pine needles within reach. There are jokes and ideas in the book that are possibly more obvious to people who are foraging and plant literate. For example Elaegnus x submacrophylla doesn’t have a well known common name, so I’ve given it one that reflects its fruits that foragers are interested in: jelly bean bush.”
You include a whole chapter on ‘Edgeland’, what do these kinds of places mean to you?
“Edgelands are marginal places that aren’t quite countryside or city—canal side, meadow with a flyover— places where the wild crept in and reclaimed spaces. Within in them you can see signs of human life like graffiti and concrete, but also there might be otters (Lutra lutra) or Japanese knotweed (Reynoutria japonica) coming up. In edgelands councils often don’t bother attempting to control Japanese knotweed with herbicides, so they can be a good place for harvesting it free of contamination. Edgelands are definitely more accessible for a lot more people than rural areas. During wandering on their doorstep, prompted by lockdown, people have been finding new places they enjoy. In the chapter on edgelands I introduce what people might be able to forage there. If you forage land you’re connected to it, and if you’re connected to it you want to protect it. It could be the same for bird watchers and butterfly hunters, foraging is another strand to feeling connected to wild places. While we see human influence on edgelands they are still a place for wildlife.”
By definition most people think about trees when they consider woodlands, for you woodlands seem quite mushroomy?
“Yes! Woodland edges are great for foraging, and their interiors are places for mushrooms. Particularly in autumn when everything seems over it is a pleasure to see the forms and shapes of mushrooms coming up feeding on the decay. I built up confidence with mushrooms starting with those that are quite distinctive like chicken of the woods (Laetiporus sulphureus).”
How does ‘Where the Wild Things Grow’ fit in with your previous books?
“Foraging was an aspect of what I was doing at the time of writing ‘The Self-Sufficientish Bible’. Ostensibly ‘Grow Your Food for Free’ is about gardening, but within that you want to know your weedy species. ‘Wild Ruins’ followed by ‘Wild Ruins BC’ came out of foraging; I had been out foraging and kept seeing ruins. Writing about ruins was a different sort of writing, not just practical direction but also describing landscapes. In ‘Where the Wild Things Grow’ foraging is situated within landscapes.”
What was your first foraging experience?
“Making nettle soup with nettles from my parents’ garden in the 80s. I have an earlier memory from the late 70s when I was 5 or 6 of picking blackberries and dad falling into the blackberry bush it was funny (N.B. he was ok even if a bit scratched). There was a whole ritual about getting tubs to put blackberries in, finding the thickets, then picking them. I know there are now houses on the place where those blackberries grew. “
How has your foraging evolved?
“In my 20s it was quite obsessive—wanting to know what every plant was. Then going on bike journeys and foraging on the way. Now, that amount of time I had seems luxurious. With kids seeing their enthusiasm (at times) is part of it. Life is a bit busier and foraging is more en route where I can fit it in. Much more casual foraging, for example picking a handful of berries and microwaving them with sugar for a quick jam. Or a handful of garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolata) picked in the morning that will go in salad at lunch. Those big trips where I set out intending to go and forage have become rarer, and are more often if I am working teaching foraging, which I appreciate as a luxury of the job. “
How do you see foraging having changed in wider society?
“In the 1990s to early 2000s there was not much information around. There wasn’t much on the Internet and apart from Richard Mabey's ‘Food for Free’ and Roger Phillips ‘Wild Food’ there weren’t books on foraging. I remember going into a bookshop and asking for a foraging book. The reply was ‘Do you mean scrabbling round in bushes looking for food?’ and I was directed to John Seymour’s ‘The Complete Book of Self-Sufficiency’ that had just a few pages on foraging in it. I would identify plants in wildflower guides and then look them up on PFAF to see if they were edible, but there wouldn’t be recipes I could find. Now you can look at Instagram and instantly find 50 different recipes for one species. People are doing fantastic things teaming up with chefs. Foragers used to be a bit more territorial about where they foraged, and now it seems that information is not quite so guarded. Being a peer group for foragers the AoF has helped to open that up.”
What is the role for foraging books now that information is easier to find online?
“Scrolling online is different to taking information in by reading a book, you don’t get the same level of immersion and escape. A book will take you somewhere much more than being online. It is also too easy to get distracted and jump from one thing to another online. Certainly the Internet has its strengths. Identification videos where they show you all around a mushroom or plant in three dimensions are really helpful learning tools. Both Internet and books are good resources. But, we do spend too much time online. Sitting down and reading quietly is so much nicer with a book than online.”
What are your future plans?
“I enjoy teaching foraging and want to carry on doing that. Working with chefs on the creative frontier of wild foods is something I would like to do. More books are in the pipeline too. “
Where the Wild Things Grow is available at local bookshops, Amazon , and Bookshop.org
Get inspired to harvest the feral by joining in with Wild and Feral Food Week, Association of Foragers member Philip Stark.
The seventh annual global Wild/Feral Food Week will take place May 21--29, 2021.
Wild/Feral Food Week takes place worldwide. For the last two years, we have had participants on every continent except Antarctica, cooperating to get "weeds on plates" (and in cups) around the world.
Wild/Feral Food Week has a number of goals:
• To introduce chefs, bartenders, eaters, and drinkers to new ingredients and "re-normalize" traditional foods that have fallen out of fashion due to industrialized agriculture.
• To establish a supply chain for wild and feral foods, including "harvesting between the rows" on farms.
• To promote foraging and foragers.
• To promote biodiversity on farms and sustainable/regenerative farming practices, including the use of edible cover crops and treating weeds as a resource rather than an enemy.
• To promote biodiversity of our diets--one of the strongest predictors of individual health.
• To remind us of who we are: hunter-gatherers intimately tied to the natural world and its complex abundance.
We would love to promote any public activities or offerings you have planned during that week.
This year, AoF is getting involved officially.
You're Invited!
• You do whatever you were already planning to do, or add a special event.
• Submit your event(s) using this form as soon as you can, and we will do what we can to shine a light on it through social media, etc.
Whatever else happens, we will at least build community and document the international interest in wild and feral foods.
Participants must agree to follow the AoF Principles and these tenets.
• Many wild and feral foods are delicious, with flavors and textures that are different from cultivated foods. They provide a special culinary opportunity, specific to season and locale.
• Foraging should be conducted responsibly, in a way that promotes biodiversity, sustainability, and resilience of the food system and of our individual diets. Foraging practices must consider time and place. We endorse and follow the principles of the Association of Foragers.
• Wild and feral foods on farms can provide biodiversity, resilience, delicious nutrition, and income. We encourage farmers to embrace wild and feral foods as economic cover crops, to "harvest between the rows," and to bring wild and feral foods to market.
• By expanding food choices and raising public awareness, we seek to promote a just, inclusive, sustainable, resilient, biodiverse, restorative, nutritious food system that supports public health and reduces the negative consequences of industrial systems of food production.
• We advocate public policies that allow and encourage responsible foraging on public land. In addition to its health and educational benefits, foraging, especially of non-native invasive species, can play an important role in "pest" control.
• Foraging is healthful not only because of the nutrients it puts on the table: the activity itself is good for our bodies and our brains. It promotes healthy ecosystems by encouraging stewardship of natural resources and personal responsibility for our habitat—be it wild, rural, suburban, or urban. It feeds and sustains social, cultural, and economic relationships and ancestral knowledge.
• Food culture is world heritage. Everyone should learn to recognize common edible plants. Knowledge of wild and feral food should be available to all. For this reason, we do not claim any proprietary rights to information about wild and feral foods, and we share all our work using permissive licenses, such as CC-BY.
Many members of AoF have participated in previous years, as have other foragers, wildcrafters, farms and farming cooperatives, noteworthy chefs, thought-leading restaurants, and progressive, ecologically minded businesses including (among others):
Foragers and Wildcrafters
• Galloway Wild Foods (Mark Williams)
• Forage London (John Rensten, Peter Studzinski)
• Forage Frolics (Richard Mawby)
• Edible Leeds (Craig Worrall)
• Forage Fine Foods (Liz Knight)
• Elijah Holland
• "Wildman" Steve Brill
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Łukasz Łuczaj shares a Polish perspective on water caltrop (Trapa natans) , an edible aquatic plant.
Water Caltrop Trapa natans L. Folk names: orzech wodny, kotwiczka, żydowskie orzechy
An annual water plant. Very rare in its wild state, it can be found only in the south, mainly in the valleys of the Wisła, San and Odra. It occurs mainly in oxbow lakes. In spring the nuts germinate and shoots rise from the bottom of the water body to the surface. In June the water chestnut creates floating leaves, and in the summer small, white flowers. The prickly nuts left over may be collected at the end of August and in September. Then the whole plant dies. Its range in the last few centuries has shrunk dramatically, partly due to climate changes, partly due to the regulation of rivers, the destruction of old rivers and the introduction of plant-eating fish (e.g. grass carp Ctenopharyngodon idella) (Piórecki 2008).
Water caltrops were formerly collected for food in a few places in Poland. In Siołkowice in the Opole province, nuts were still collected in the twentieth century. They were blanched before use, which made it easier to open the nut (Szromba-Rysowa 1966). Kolberg mentions the eating of water caltrops in the Chełm area in the nineteenth century (Kolberg 1890b). The fruits of the water caltrop were mainly eaten by children, also in Pysznica near Nisko (Podkarpacie) and the Kozienice area (PEA2). In the Sandomierz area Jews ate the nuts, buying them from peasants, hence they were called ‘Jewish nuts’ (Hryniewiecki 1952).
In the Lubomirski Ordinance in Charzewice (in the former Sandomierz Forest), still in the nineteenth century serfs paid rent by collecting water caltrop fruits (Gaj-Piotrowski 1975). In the mid-twentieth century in Zbydniów near Rozwadów (south-east Poland) rye bread was made with the addition of flour made of water caltrop. The seeds were ground in mills (Piórecki 2008). In the same area boiled nuts were sold during village fairs, packed in paper bags. So writes Piórecki (2008):
It was necessary for highly valued elegance amongst young men, for them, before giving girls nuts to taste, to cut the woody covering of the nut with a sharp pocket knife and put it straight in the mouth of the chosen girl. This was done through cutting it down the whole height of the lower arm of the nut, i.e. from the neck to the base. After cutting, or more precisely, through pressing, like a tick, the upper arm of the nut in his fingers, then the seed of the nut was thrown as if from a catapult straight into the mouth. Already peeled nut seeds 'like toffees from the fair' were sold at a higher price.
Fresh fruits – the easiest to peel – were collected from the end of July to mid-September, and in the spring the fruits were eaten after wintering in a cool pantry i.e. in water in natural containers or special winter storage places. The fruits were used after half an hour's boiling in salted water (Piórecki 2008).
A significant interest in the consumption of the nut was shown by people of Jewish descent. Jewish buyers before 1939 paid 1 złoty 80 grosz for 25 kg of peeled fruits of water caultrop. In this period a day's work for one worker harvesting crops on the farm was worth 80 grosz. Two strong men in one day, in good weather conditions, could collect from 150-200 kg of fruits from the oxbow lakes in Zbydniów or in Chwałowice (Piórecki 2008).
Find out more about foraging plants that grow in Eastern Europe Łukasz's book 'Foraging in Eastern Europe' Plants cross borders and many of the species he writes about grown in wider areas, for example water caltrop is found across Eurasia and has also been introduced to the USA where in some areas its rapid growth covering lake surfaces is considered problematic. For example here is a species profile of water caltrop in the Great Lakes region.
Led into the realm of mushrooms and having a resident barn owl AoF member Daniel Butler shares how 25 years living in rural Wales shaped his world in The Owl House
Here is an excerpt in which Wales is revealed as a world class mushrooming location.
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It surprises many people to discover that Wales has the perfect conditions for many of the world’s most prized fungi. The climate is mild and damp – which is much better for many mushrooms than the hot dry conditions found in Italy or the Dordogne.
A few years back I heard the Michelin-starred Danish chef, René Redzepi,being interviewed by Kirsty Young on Desert Island Discs. His Copenhagen restaurant, Noma, is ranked number one in the world, and the chef proudly boasted he had dropped caviar from his menu in favour of chicken of the woods, a yellow bracket fungus which grows in summer on deciduous trees such as willow and oak. He described it as a fantastic but extremely rare ingredient which grows in only two places in Denmark and only three people know where these are.
This is probably hype, designed to promote the restaurant’s menu, but even if it is rare in Denmark, it certainly isn’t in Wales. I know of a dozen sites and when it does occur, the outcrops can be significant, weighing several kilos. I have no problems with his claims for its gastronomic excellence, for although to my mind it is nothing like chicken, it has a delicate flavour and a fantastically firm texture which makes it an infinitely superior tofu.
One potentially surprising aspect of this however is the almost total dearth of fungal knowledge in the locality. There are many good amateur naturalists locally, people who know a linnet from a twite and a willow warbler from a whitethroat. Most people also prize the myriad of whimberries that fruit in mid-summer, but virtually no one knows anything more about wild fungi than nostalgic memories of gathering field mushrooms as a child: ‘I remember picking them with my grandfather,’ they’ll sigh. ‘We’d eat them with bacon around the kitchen table for breakfast – delicious!’
Another odd thing about the best mushrooms is where they are found. Most guide books recommend scouring deciduous woods for choice species such as porcini, bay boletes, chanterelles and wood hedgehogs and there is certainly no shortage of oak, birch and hazel coppice. Yet after years of hunting, I find the most fruitful woods are actually mature conifer plantations. These are generally derided by conservationists as ecological deserts, artificial habitats that are so dark thanks to close planting of non-native that little of value can live there.
In fact the reverse is true when it comes to fungi and sometimes the crops can be prodigious. Early on in my mushrooming gathering I entered one wood on a whim and left a few minutes later with around 30kg of porcini which were sliced and dried overnight on top of the wood burner. On another occasion I had taken my children to the Llangorse Climbing Centre. I had no desire to watch them clamber up and down plastic rocks for two hours so went to photograph a local waterfall only to stumble across a bumper crop of chanterelles – I picked 7kg in 20 minutes which were cleaned, flash-fried and frozen for the coming winter.
These are just two of the scores of edible species I began to discover in local woods. I learned piecemeal, adding to my repertoire one species at a time, but with the enthusiasm of a novice, I threw myself into the task and by the end of the first autumn could confidently identify a dozen. By the end of the second year I had found and tasted almost 50. Certainly some were very much better than others and after two decades of collecting I ignore most, and porcini form the backbone of my harvesting.
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Excerpt from The Owl House by Daniel Butler
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