Foraging for beginners

Since moving to the countryside 8 weeks ago I've been initiated into the joys of foraging for food. This is not really something I've ever done before, I can recall blackberry picking as a kid and I've been to a couple of pick your own but that was about the extent of my experience.

Now you will often find me out and about seeking out what my family can enjoy next! I am of course super lucky to be living on a 220 acre country estate but I'm assured by a friend who lives in central London that you can find food to forage most anywhere. Check out your local parklands, hedgerows and disused areas like overgrown footpaths.

It is not only me who has been bitten with the foraging bug though, my kids are all keen for it too and what a marvellous thing that is.

There are so many benefits to children being involved -

1. Getting outside for exercise and lots of fresh air
2. Great learning opportunity for the children to learn where their food actually comes from and what it looks like both ripe and unripe
3. They develop confidence in their own abilities to pick and use the food we have foraged
4. It gives them an awareness of seasons and what grows when, it is so easy to lose this knowledge with things like strawberries now being available in the supermarkets all year round
5. Once the kids have picked their food they are keen to bake with it and thus there develops another passion
6. We have a blast as a family and really enjoying chatting as we go along

Don't forget to get kitted out when you are going out foraging and remember a few bits of etiquette:

1. Wear long legged and sleeved cloths as brambles and bites can hurt (we know this first hand!)
2. Use kids buckets for easy picking
3. Remember to just forage on public land or seek permission from the landowner if you are accessing private land
4. Take what you need and leave some for other people too (it's good to share)
5. Leave some for the birds and animals too
6. Give your foraged foods a good wash when you get home and let all those bugs creep out (yuck!)
7. Don't pick mushrooms unless you have an expert with you, it is all too easy to get fungi wrong and there can be serious repercussions
8. Only eat foraged foods if you are certain what they are. We have numerous berries here on the estate but until I take the gardener out with me to identify them I'll just stick to the blackberries

So what can you easily forage for in the UK?

There is so much it is unreal, some things seem to be easier than others. I'm really looking forward to the next couple of weeks once the sweet chestnuts are big enough and fall to the ground. It won't be difficult to collect them but it might be a bit prickly, so I have my gloves at the ready. Roasting those will be a real treat.

Wild garlic (Spring)

Blackberries (September time)

Hazelnuts (or cobnuts) (September time)

Elderberries (August/ September) and Elderflowers (June time)

Crab apples (September/ October onwards)

Rosehips (September time)

As you can see the early Autumn is a real feast of a time and I have just touched on all the things you can find if you are a bit more adventurous - what about nettles, dandelions, chickweed and seaweed? Oh and something like wild plums if you are very lucky!

I hope I might have inspired you to get our looking for some sweet chestnuts or to be aware of all the great finds you might have next year and make sure you get some apples as there are so much great cooking with apples recipes. Or why not check out Aly's how to make bramble jelly post.

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Hazelnut picking - how and when?

Probably my favourite find here in the grounds of my new home are hazelnut (or cobnuts as some refer to them) trees. I spotted them quite early on and spoke to the gardeners to check they were what I suspected. I was told I'd be lucky if I beat the squirrels to them and that was it, I was determined and so was Miss E, she has proved herself to be a fantastic forager.

After some research on the web I found that we needed to harvest the nuts green and they would ripen and dry once picked, so that is what the girls and I set off to do.

So how do you spot a hazelnut tree?

The nuts hide, so make sure you lift leaves and if you have small people with you like I did then you can literally send them into the tree to look under all the branches. The nuts can be found growing as singles like in the picture below but often they are in clusters of between 3 - 5 nuts. Pick the cluster together and let them dry that way.

With regard to knowing when to pick - a good tip I found was to start once some of the cobs start to become speckled and are on the turn from green to brown. If already brown they will start to fall from the trees and can just be picked up form the floor (if you get there before the squirrels)

We did well and got a large bucketful on our first pick.

Picked on 4th September

This is how they look on 18th September

My plan was to just eat the nuts as they are, Blue Bear Woods tells me you can eat them young and green but I was not so fussed on the texture like that. My original plan was just to allow them to ripen and then eat them as nuts with my museli or as a snack. Then Liz from Me and my Shadow sent me her recipe for Salted Caramel Cobnut Crunch.

I'm linking up this post to Fiona's Country Kids - click on the badge to head over and see what others have got up to in their Country Kids exploits.

 

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If you like what you have read and want to stay up-to-date then subscribe by email for free and receive blog posts directly to your in-box - just click the link Subscribe to Mummy From The Heart... by Email or perhaps you like to keep all your blog reading in one place, if that is the case you can follow me on BlogLovin too!