Hunting and Gathering for Sustainable Food Production #FLsustain

During the MOOC (Massive Online Open Course) I have been participating in over the last few weeks the idea that a hunter gatherer style diet or a 'Paleo Diet' could be more sustainable than a diet which comes from intensively farmed food, particularly livestock such as beef.

By Mopane Game Safaris (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Having more than a little experience of foraged food I think this is a little over simplified, although there is no doubt that the diet the modern and prehistoric hunter gatherer societies had access to does not require the same impacts/inputs or withdrawals from the environment than a modern diet provided by agriculture does.

For example a diet provided by agriculture requires that we input fertilizer and insecticide for crops and medication for livestock, impact the natural ecosystems of an area by rearing non-native crops or livestock and changing the landscape to suit them, and withdraw water and nutrients. So yes a diet supported by agriculture does have those drawbacks and yes there are certainly some agricultural products which are more of a drain on the environment than others. For example we saw the agriculture of the British Isles change drastically during the Second World War; away from primarily pastoral farming to arable farming as it allowed more food to be produced per acre to support the population while food was rationed. 

It's not as simple as that though, when hunter gatherers last roamed the British Isles the total population was thousands rather than tens of millions. They migrated to take advantage of seasonal resources and their entire life revolved around gathering food and other resources that they would use to sustain life. Now I can't imaging the entire population of Birmingham travelling to the coast each year for several weeks or months to catch fish and collect limpets and if they did what would happen? That's right all the food would be used up very quickly. The British Isles can't support it's population through hunting and gathering like it once did.  

I don't believe that the reason for that is that people don't know as much about wild food or are too squeamish, although yes that is as a rule true, but if the circumstances demanded it, and by that I mean hunger, I think people would be very quick to adopt wild food into their diet. 

This is a bit hard for me to admit because as a 'bushcrafter' and wild food enthusiast I'd like to think I'd have a headstart on most people when it comes to getting food from the wild if I need to but people are adaptable and I honestly don't think it would take people long to thinking of blackbirds and field fares as just small bony chickens if they got hungry. Also if you look at wild food in general the ones that you would rely on as staples aren't the kind you would mistake for anything else; cat tails, acorns, burdock etc.. and meat and fish is fairly self explanatory. So it wouldn't take long for people to get back into the swing of using wild foods. It's just us wierdos that want to eat fungi, and black nightshade berries and to tell the difference between hogweed and hemlock and things like that that need to be really careful when we are foraging.       

The problem is if we can't provide a 'paleo' diet through hunting and gathering how do we get it, that's right we'd have to farm it and as soon as we have to do that we have the same problem as before with the impacts of intensive agriculture. Yes it wont be the same impacts, we wont be making the massive environmental water withdrawals that are required to rear beef, although in the UK this is hardly a problem especially given the recent weather. Instead we'll be 'farming' something else like limpets, which made up a significant and important part of the prehistoric populations diet in the British Isles, 

Now here's some homework for you; google 'environmental impacts of shellfish aquaculture' and just have a look at the environmental issues associated with it. 

You see as much as we need to do something to improve the sustainability of our food production the solutions aren't as simple as they sometimes seem.  

Geoff

What does landscape mean to you? #FLsustain

A view of the Southern Alps of New Zealand from the top of Mount Sabestapol

Over the last few weeks I have been taking part in a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) on the topic of; "Sustainability, Society and You" through Futurelearn and The University of Nottingham.  

One of the topics covered was what the landscape means to individuals and I thought I'd share some of my feelings and the reasons that I have a particularly strong desire to engage with the landscape and my natural environment. 

As I grew up I spent a lot of time outside, my parents were not the kind of people to encourage (or tolerate) lots of time spent playing on the computer and as such I never owned a games console or a game boy and spent my time outside instead. I will be forever grateful for that kind of upbringing and now really enjoy any chance I get to work out of doors with my family. My Dad is an avid bird watcher and so I learned from a young age not only how to identify the birds I saw but also to appreciate the wildlife around me. Later he taught me how to shoot, we learned to fly fish together and we have put our knowledge of  wildlife to great use over the years to put many a tasty meal on the table. 

Some people might call me a hypocrite when in one sentence I proclaim my admiration and appreciation of wildlife and the natural world and in the next talk about shooting and eating said wildlife. Well you are entitled to your opinion but I have always felt that being able to sustainably harvest my own food from the environment helps me appreciate it more. 

But landscapes and wildlife come in all shapes and sizes and I'm not more attached to one than another;

The view from Rödbergetsfort, Boden, Norrbotten, Sweden 

Lathkill Dale in the White Peak area of Derbyshire

Svartån, Västerås Sweden.

Storforsen, Sweden

Striding Edge and Helvellyn, Lake District.

Now I've had many opportunities to visit these places and each of them is uniquely attractive in it's own way. I find it quite easy to go down the route of analysing different habitats and landscapes and thinking about their 'value' in terms of the wildlife they support, the edible plant species that might be found there and a whole host of other things but sometimes it's nice to just to look at the beauty of an area and be grateful that it's there just to look at. 

That brings me on to sustainability: A lot of people, in the name of sustainability talk about reducing or removing human influence on the landscape/environment/nature but if that approach was adopted  many of the landscapes pictured above would simply not be there. They are not sustainable, but not because our pollution, waste or urban expansion is going to destroy them, although that is a risk for some places, but because constant human management and intervention has kept these places in the condition that they are in. The idea that nature makes these beautiful places on it's own is completely wrong, yes left to it's own devices nature does create beautiful landscapes but they do not stay the same for very long. 

Imagine for a moment that suddenly every person vanishes from the British Isles, along with every all our cars, domestic livestock and rubbish. Additionally imagine that all the species that have become extinct as a result of our impacts suddenly come back, wild boar, reindeer, elk; those beautiful views of the peak district and lake district and any other area of heath or moor would soon disappear, they are not a 'climax' community, that means that without our constant management they would naturally become something else, probably woodland.  Nature is not static, it constantly changes and moves according to it's own pattern. 

One of the things which connects me to the landscape so deeply is not the chance to look at theses views or visit them or take pictures of them but the part I have been lucky enough to play in shaping, maintaining and hopefully improving the landscapes that I have been lucky enough to work in. 

So think about that: Think of what you can do for the environment rather than just what you can stop doing for the environment. 

Geoff

Salmon!

Repeated from my other blog: Nature is never far away..., hope you enjoy!

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You know that excited knot you get in your stomach before something really exciting? I felt that this week. 

What was I doing? I was minutes away from ticking off something that's been on my bucket list for years. I thought I'd have to make a special trip - maybe to Scotland - to tick this one off so had ruled it out for some time much later. But...

On Sunday I got a tip off from a friend that at a weir on the Derbyshire / Staffordshire border Salmon were leaping. Bearing in mind that its hard to get much further from the coast in the UK I hadn't even thought to check that this spectacle would be available to witness just 30 minutes drive from my house. Needless to say I didn't need to be told twice and immediately made plans to get over there as soon as possible. Two days later that I was walking the short river side footpath up to the weir; that was when 'the knot' arrived. 

This was the view that greeted me as I made my way down the bank of the River Dove. Although I knew the Salmon (and Sea Trout too) had been seen a few days before we had also had a few days of torrential rainfall. I was expecting the water level to have risen, and I wasn't sure how this would have affected the behaviour of the fish. I needn't have worried as it turned out, they were still very busy. 

Just seconds after I approached the weir itself a massive Salmon leaped clear - box ticked, but I wasn't going anywhere! A few of the people there (word had got out, in fact I was relatively late to the party!) mentioned that when they had been a few days before, with lower water levels, the fish had been leaping more.

While the fish were leaping there wasn't a lot of succeeding going on - none in fact. No-one I spoke to had seen one make it, and if you take a look at the picture above you can just about see a steep step right at the top of the weir. I'm not a fish expert by any means, but I would be amazed if any fish could make it up and over that last seemingly insurmountable obstacle, especially with the water running as fast and as high as it was while I was there. 

I allowed myself the luxury of just watching for a while, I've missed too many natural spectacles by trying to get them on camera. Also when I first arrived there was a bit of queue for the good spots so I initially had to watch through a small screen of trees, leafless of course at this time of year so I could still see well enough but it would have been pointless with a camera. I never kept track, despite having intentions to do so, but I would say there was a leap or at least some visible activity every 2 minutes or less, with occasional flurries of activity which drew excited calls and cheers from the observers. 

Trying to describe the leaping itself is a bit of a non-event, it really is something you have to see to capture the magic. If I told you I stood for two hours by a river bank on a grey November day and watched fish of varying sizes jumping about and failing to get to their destination, you might think I had a very dull life for that to be a better option... but it was thrilling. Better than the cinema any day, and the tickets are cheaper! 

The suspense is tangible, you never know exactly what's going to break the surface next, or where, or when! You can't be sure whether it will be a tiddler 40 yards away in the shadow on the other side of the river or something like this...

                                                   

                                      

  

Now I wasn't there to take photo's - I was there to watch, but I wanted to make some record of breaking my Salmon duck, if you get what I mean. When I initially set the camera up I just left it on a tripod videoing so I could watch without being distracted. Later I attached a remote release and set it to continuous shooting so I could trigger the camera without having to have my hand on the shutter button. It was just a few minutes after I changed to this mode that this monster leaped just in front of me. I'm guestimating but this fish has got to be more than 2 feet clear of the water at the highest point of its arc. 

Still images just doesn't convey the power of these fish or what they are achieving here. Even the video's don't quite do it justice. I've managed to condense over an hour of footage down into just a few minutes. 

While the fish stole the show, the river wasn't entirely devoid of other natural interest, although not exactly teeming either. Not long after I arrived a pair of mute swans winged their majestic way over the weir and down stream, their loud wing beats clearly audible even over the rushing water. Later a Kingfisher whirred down stream looking for all the world like someone had put it on fast forward, they are so fast aren't they! Its brilliant blue wasn't looking at its best but I suspect this was mostly to do with the light on the day, which was, to be kind, soft - it was pretty grey and miserable to be honest, but as no rain fell I refuse to complain.  

Eventually I had to call it a day and get home and get on with some work. I'll try and get back before the run finishes - just because it's ticked off my bucket list doesn't mean I won't make the most of this awesome (in the true sense of the word) natural spectacle so close to home again.

Richard 

The Riddy Wood Project has its own blog now!

While we've been keeping you up to date with everything going on at The Riddy Wood Project through our blog the time has come to go solo: The Riddy Wood Project has got its own!

It's hosted on www.riddywood.co.uk along with the other project specific details. If you've not been over there yet please do go and have a look, and follow on twitter while your at it @Riddywood.

For the first few weeks we'll duplicate everything about Riddy Wood on both blogs (except this first 'Welcome to the blog' post you can see above) but after that we'll just post links on our social media platforms to overlapping information. Obviously everyone reading this will follow both anyway!

Hope you enjoy the new blog!

Richard

Bushcraft Babies; Axes, chainsaws and bugs.

We will be running a regular bushcraft babies feature on the Bushcraft Education Blog from now on, you may have seen an earlier Bushcraft babies posts on foraging for berries or seen my articles in Bushcraft and Survival Skills Magazine on the topic of practicing bushcraft with children.

Recently my children visited me in Riddy Wood while I was doing some work and had a bit of fun and helped me out. 

Michael's first experience with an axe was chopping up this rotten wood to make a dead wood pile for insects.

Lillie wasn't afraid of picking up the lesser stag beetle larvae she found. 

We found an immature smooth newt. 

Which Michael adopted as his pet dragon

They both decided they were lumberjacks

and helped carry some planks we made to be stacked for seasoning in the bivi. 

We look forward to sharing some more 'Bushcraft Babies' experiences with you in the future.

Geoff
   

From the High Seat, ready, steady......wait and see!

Everything that can be done, has been done. Additional new high seats have been installed and secured, the trees and paths are trimmed to permit quiet (if not silent) travel through the woods and clear visibility from the vantage points. Cameras have been checked and our numerous visits and surveys have been reviewed. We know roughly where we will sit (wind direction may dictate otherwise) and what we expect to see.

We have harvested various hedgerow fruits to make into fruit sources for our fresh venison and of course the rifles have been zeroed to check everything is perfect for the big day. Of course, the deer may not see it that way but those of us privileged to be involved in the meat harvest have to be as ready as we can to ensure the best and most humane result possible.

We have had a fairly heavy fruit harvest this year; sloes, cherry plums, apples and haws have all featured in meals recently and will complement the venison we hope to harvest very nicely.  

We will be up at 04-00 and in our seats before 06-00 so that we are there to watch the world wake up, to see the sunrise cast it's early rays over the countryside and paint the new day with new colours, the greens now less common and more yellow, orange and red hues to be seen, many of those colours laying on the ground now in carpets and drifts, creating their own 'noise hazards' and keeping everyone focused, not least the deer!

The Autumn colours of Gamsey Wood

What will we see? Who knows! Deer hopefully but what else? As always, I will enjoy the outing irrespective of the outcome. If I have to walk out loaded then that will be great but if I have to walk out empty handed, that must be fine too, which birds will I share my tree with this week? What badgers will still be out and about? what foxes? I'm petty sure that I will hear and see water fowl but what exactly, I have no idea, sometimes you see them, sometimes not, I have stood in the fog and heard them pass just a few tens of feet away and never seen them, it will be an adventure, new every single trip, watch this space for our update after the 7th. See you there!


MG

Foragers Diary; Wild Service Tree

Today I'd like to introduce you to the wild service tree (Sorbus torminalis), this species is fairly uncommon in the UK now and so they are normally only found in the remaining pockets of ancient woodland.

At Riddy Wood, which is an ancient woodland, we are lucky that we have quite a few, I always knew that there were a few but recently as we have worked on the management plans for the wood and started this winters coppicing we have spotted a lot more of them. They show up all the more in their beautiful autumn colours;

The bronze coloured leaves of the wild service contrast strongly with the yellow and green of the elm at Riddy Wood.  

Up closer the wild service looks almost red or pink.

The fruit of the wild service tree are also known as chequers and have been used in the past to flavour drinks, however the trees in Riddy Wood have been overshadowed by the oak and ash canopy and seem to produce very little fruit. The wood is used in some countries as a timber crop but here in the UK where there is so little of it now it's wood has no commercial value. 

Wild Service Fruit 'Chequers' are never large but our trees at Riddy Wood don't have many on at all. 

The unique leaf shape of the Wild Service Tree. 

You can see the much larger ash trees shading out the humble wild service trees underneath. 

 I look forward to being able to share some experiments with wild service fruit with you next year if the crop improves once our management of the woods open up the canopy and provide more light for the understory.

Geoff