Foragers Diary; October 2019

When you learn about wild food it is as important to learn what you can't eat as what you can so you recognise poisonous and inedible plants and fungi and can avoid them;

Apple-of-peru, shoo-fly-plant (it has insect repelant properties) or nicandra is one of the nightshade family which is often planted as an ornamental in gardens. It is reportedly eaten in some regions of Nepal and it certainly wouldnt be the only nightshade which is edible; tomatoes, chillies, black nightshade (huckleberry) to name a few. But most of what I've read indicates that most parts of this plant are poisonous so this is one I'm going to pass on for now until I get more reliable information.

 

Moving on to some edible fruit;

Roadside apple trees are often an untapped wild food resource and we turned a motley assortment of roadside apples into a delicious warm drink recently. We had a good mix of varieties; some looked like russets, some were crab apples and there were a few other varieties too. We juiced them up and spiced them with some cinamon, cloves and star anise, sweetened with honey and drank it by the fire. We'll be making more for Christmas.

The sea side is a good place to look for fruit at this time of year too, sea-buckthorn is particularly easy to spot and identify especially when it is covered in it's bright orange berries. Its a great source of vitamin C as well as fats and although sour to the taste when fresh that can be lessened by bletting. It has a long history of use all over the wold in food products such a juices and jams but also in the preparation of skin ointments and creams.

Back in the kitchen we've been preparing rosehip and blackberry jelly all ready for our winter stores.

Rhubarb and apple crumble with ingredients from the garden was on the menu too. 

Game;

With the shooting season underway game is on the menu regularly at the moment;

As well as the duck we've got pheasant, goose, coot and a whole range of other game to eat and to prepare for Christmas.  

Carrots, swede, onions, green lentils and pearl barley along with the pheasant legs and goose breasts which had already been fried in a dusting of flour went into the slow cooker with a couple of pints of stock.

To make the most efficient use of your game birds without spending hours plucking them consider preparing them using the method my Dad taught me and which he explains here;

Expose the breast of the bird, the skin isn't strong and can be split over the breastbone with just your thumbs. Then take a sharp knife and remove each breast. The legs are next; dislocate at the knees before going through the skin and tendons with a knife then dislocate the hips and peel off the skin. You might not get a picture perfect roast bird but it saves a lot of time and all the feathery mess of plucking.


A bit of butchery to break up a red deer carcass for the freezer was required recently too;

One red deer haunch and one backstrap yielded all this meat. Thats why you have to be a 'hunter-gatherer', gathering on it's own just isn't enough sometimes. There are many, many delicious meals here for my family.

A Full Wild Meal (plus a few potatoes)

The parasol mushrooms, and sweet chestnuts that accompanied some recently harvested venison for a delicious Sunday dinner were harvested less than two hours before they were eaten. Delicious; and the children love helping with the foraging.

delicious, plump sweet chestnuts

Collecting shaggy parasol mushrooms

Ready for the pan

Roast venison, sweet chestnut mashed potato and parasol mushrooms, Delicious.

Hunter Gatherer Ethics; Environmental Miss-Education

The difference between moorland managed for shooting on the right of the fence and grazed and denuded of heather and anything but grass on the left. (Image by Richard Guy)

Misunderstanding about the environment and about the work that goes on in the countryside abounds, often championed by well meaning individuals with the welfare of animals and the conservation of the natural world at heart but without the practical experience or appreciation of the relevance of wildlife management to accept that sometimes humans need to manage the environment rather than just let nature do it's own thing.

Mark Avery, former director of research for the RSPB published Inglorious in 2015 criticising grouse shooting and supporting his call for a ban on driven grouse shooting. While he does cite some very credible literature and does make some very good arguments against large scale driven grouse shooting he completely overlooks the benefits of land managed by game keepers. 

I take a dim-view of 'celebrity environmentalists' like Chris Packham and Bill Oddie who should know better than to make some of the claims they do about grouse shooting and game keepers, although there are some in that industry who certainly do break laws and persecute wildlife the work of gamekeepers is still very important to the character of the British countryside. I do though have a little more sympathy with the kind of environmental 'miss-education' that can occur in schools.

'Environmental Education' is part of the curriculum in the form of topics such as climate change and sustainability and in a 2003 paper about environmental education in Australian National Parks *1 highlights the issue of teachers without the necessary understanding of the environment to deliver effective environmental education. The authors comment specifically that although teachers may have understood environmental issues from a social or cultural perspective they lacked a sound understanding of the ecological and management issues. 

I have a similar concern having experienced first-hand the effects of misguided people who were concerned about the environment, they had certainly taken a position about the environment and were attempting to influence society which are two of the highest goals of environmental education but their position and action were informed, not by sound fact and local ecological knowledge, but by media and schools where the preoccupation seems to be to presenting global ecological and conservation issues without the context of local issues and badly informed teachers who will preach, rather than teach, about a specific, possibly emotional interest they have in the environment. To put this in context over my years of working in the countryside I have had traps and snares stolen or vandalised, valuable livestock released and been yelled at and verbally abused for cutting down trees and have been reported to the police for carrying out perfectly legal, necessary and beneficial environmental management activities. 

Contrary to popular belief it is still legal to trap and snare many species of vermin and predatory mammals as well as some birds under the conditions of the General Licences as well as use snares which meet certain design criteria under the UK's laws. These traps fill a vital role in controlling species such as grey squirrel and mink but many dismiss them as illegal and cruel without any proper understanding of their role, function or the lengths which have been gone to to ensure modern traps are humane. 

I do not believe that it is the role of teachers and environmental educators to address the issues or specific difficulties I have faced due to ‘environmental mis-education’ but there should be a responsibility to provide local context for peoples experiences in the environment rather than them forming perceptions of nature and the environment from TV documentaries of exotic animals, deforestation, global warming and other, very important, but very distant and intangible environmental issues. 

Deforestation to make way for agriculture in Mexico By Jami Dwyer - https://www.flickr.com/photos/74281168@N00/173937750/, Public Domain, Link

If instead of using the easily accessible, celebrity endorsed, well marketed, neatly packaged but flawed examples of the negatives of wildlife and environmental management teachers were a bit more critical of the material they delivered and were willing and comfortable to step out of the school building onto a local farm, nature reserve, shooting estate, beach or hillside their students would see the day to day activities that go on out there and be able to relate to the climate and sustainability issues in their own community rather than form the opinion the cutting down trees is bad because deforestation in the Amazon is bad and that's all they have learned about at school. 

Coppice management in a UK ancient woodland, a whole different kettle of fish to deforestation although tarred with the same brush in many peoples minds because they simply don't understand the difference.

While I don't expect everyone to suddenly start hunting and foraging their own food after a brush with the environment of their local area I do think that it will be much easier to have those conversations about where food comes from and why shooting and fishing are a legitimate and beneficial way of putting food on the table once people understand how the environment of their local area is maintained and managed.

My son mackerel fishing off the Dorset Coast

It's not only about food though or the rights and wrongs of killing something to eat but about respect for the people who make a living out of agriculture and countryside management and an understanding of the UK's unique landscape and countryside. 

As bushcrafters you, and I say you because I am a deer stalker by trade and I train game keepers so to many I am one of the enemy when it comes to their opinions about wildlife and the environment. YOU have a unique opportunity to teach people about those things without being a direct part of an industry that many distrust and find distasteful and can do a great deal to educate people about their countryside. 

References

*1 Lugg, A. & Slattery, D., (2003). Use of National Parks for Outdoor Environmental Education: An       Australian Case Study. Journal of Adventure Education and Outdoor Learning, 3(1), pp. 77-92.

Foragers Diary; August 2018

The fruits of a bit of opportunistic Summer foraging; comfrey, sweet cicely and a single puff ball.

Comfrey leaves in a simple batter frying in oil.

Cooked and ready to eat.

Comfrey leaves are very suculent and are a felicious shade of green once cooked.

Comfrey fritter with cream and fresh fruit.

DISCLAIMER; Comfrey is superficially similar to foxglove which you absolutely must NOT eat, foxgloves contain digitalis and could kill you. Also avoid the purple flowered cultivars of comfrey as they have been linked to cancer the native Common Comfrey with it's creamy white flowers is safe to eat though. Select young succulent leaves rather than the older leaves as these will be tougher and may have developed a bitter taste. 

Foxglove leaves have jagged edges and a more oval shape

Comfrey leaves come to a point and have wavy but not jagged edges DON'T CONFUSE THE TWO!!

In August you may also find one of not only my favourite edible fungi but one of the most sought after culinary mushrooms in the world.

Chantarelles peeking up through the damp grass. 

They were so abundant I was able to collect quite a few and have been back for more since.

The wrinkled appearance instead of true gills is a key identifying feature. That and the fruity, almost apricot, smell and the bright egg yolk yellow colour.

My oldest preparing them for the frying pan.

Although possibly a waste in the eyes of a talented chef fried in butter as an accompaniment to a big breakfast they were great.

Don't confuse them with subtly similar species, the gill's here are wrong as is the colour and there was no smell of apricots, do be careful with fungi even ones which like the chanterrelle seem fairly easy to ID. 

There is no better way to get children involved with the outdoors and wild food than with a bit of wild fruit harvesting, blackberries, raspberries and all manner of other fruits are to be found in the countryside if you spend some time looking.

My oldest; very proud of his haul of red and yellow raspberries. Between us we got about four kilos of raspberries plus some gooseberries and black currants. 

It would have been criminal not to use some of them to make an eaton mess.

Mulberries are my favorite wild fruit, and while they are not native to Britain, having been imported to cultivate silk worms, you can often find them in the grounds of stately homes. I found one recently on a stroll around the grounds of tewkesburry abbey.

It was cordened off to stop people trampling the berries into the abbey.

But there were a few within reach. They do ripen to black eventually but are still delicious when they are like this. There is also a white variety.

And this is why they don't want them trodden into the abbey. They are incredibly juicy!

ENJOY THE SOFT FRUIT AND FUNGI THAT AUGUST BRINGS AND WE'LL SEE YOU NEXT MONTH FOR MORE WILD FOOD.