Foraging: why, where and what if we all start doing it?
Green alkanet grows everywhere and its flowers are edible
In the last few years I’ve become rather attracted to the idea of foraging for food. Having had an allotment in the past, and knowing the time and work that goes into growing veg, the idea of going out into the wider environment to find sources of food which have cost me nothing in monetary and effort terms is very, very attractive.
On a recent trip to Conwy in Wales, the bushes alongside farm lanes were dripping with sloes, rosehips and blackberries. But what about here in (sub)urban Bedford, what’s to be found for foraging?
I’ve lived in the town for a year now and found a few places to find wild food: sea buckthorn, damsons, blackberries and rosehips at Priory Marina; crab apples in the streets around Castle Road, elderberries on the footpath off Caves Lane and green alkanet (pictured above – you can eat the lovely blue flowers) and hairy bittercress all over the place. if you’re a forager, please share your haunts below in the comments…
So, let’s say everyone gets into the idea of foraging – what then? Will there be enough to go around or will we be fighting over those damsons, rowans and bittercress? I suspect we’ve got a while before this is a problem, but it’s worth thinking about.
Right now, though, the difficulty is getting people to pick even the obvious fruit outside their front doors. There’s a street off Castle Road (I can’t remember which one: maybe Pembroke?) with a apple tree that was full of little red-skinned, red-fleshed apples in late summer: I think I’ve identified them as a variety called Red Devil: great to eat and produces beautiful pink juice.
I nearly cried when nobody touched them: the sweet little red apples dropped and were mashed under feet and car tyres, probably driven by people driving to a shop to buy – you guessed it – apples grown half way across the world (and not half as tasty). I’d have brought a ladder and picked them all, but I was a bit worried about how people in the street would react: maybe next year.
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I think that foraging has a number of fans from Bedford. Many of us wanting to know more about which were and what. so this is a nice intro. it would be good to do some season walks and foraging. All part of the great reskilling!! A thread on Zero Carbon Castle’s website is worth linking in here because it discusses ZCC’s abundance project, of which foraging is a part;
http://zerocarboncastle.org/2009/05/25/unused-open-space-and-fruit-tree-map/
Michael Harper started a google map identifying potential fruit tress for harvesting etc any good foraging spots commented here could be added to the map.
http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&oe=UTF8&msa=0&msid=113957322610800863705.00046e5b33e392b55b7dd
As well as our personal foraging and connection with food, on a community level, there’s a needs to put thought into what can be produced from “wasted” (in nature there’s no waste of course) plums, blackberries, nettles etc. perhaps we can set up some kind of herb dryng, tea making, cider press, jam making etc
the Sheffield abundance project, which has inspired ZCC, has already started down this road, so rather than reinventing the wheel it would be worth learning from our neighbours http://www.growsheffield.com/
Two things come to mind when I read this particular section which is a big interest of mine. 1). You could possibly also contact Herbs, Hands, Healing in Norfolk as they are experienced herbalists who make their own herbal and wild foods and teas from plants and fruits they have actually collected and foraged from the wild or grown themselves, rather than just buy them from suppliers! They’re very helpful. 2). They taught me when learning with them that, its really important to make sure you collet fruits etc that are not directly on a busy road side – pick those that are at least a little way from the roadside, or at least a road – if you have no choice – that is not used much – fuel fumes – however small a quantity you may think – still are taken in by the growing fruit and therefore consumed! Hope this helps!
I am so excited by this post! I went to the talk the fellow from the Abundance Project in Sheffield gave here in Bedford, and it really got my juices flowing (pun not intended!). In August when I was down in Totnes, I went on a foraging trip for wild blackberries with my friend Vicki. It was absolutely unbelievable how many ripe blackberries there were in the hedgerows, totally untouched by anyone. We came home and made a beautiful crumble with the blackberries and some apples we collected from a windfall from a tree in her front garden. The experience becomes something far more than about food, but something that makes you feel connected to the earth.
I think there are two reasons why people don’t harvest local food. First, they actually don’t KNOW or trust that something is edible. For instance, on Howbury street between Goldington Road and Russell Park, there are a huge amount of cherry trees… or at least I think they are. Now I have no idea if the thousands of red-black cherries I saw fall to the ground are edible or not. I would need someone more knowledgeable to tell me. It is only this year that I learned the local plums were edible (and delicious), yet I saw hundreds of beautiful ripe plums fall off the trees in someone’s garden along Oakland Road jutt to get run over by footfall/bicycles.
The second reason I think things don’t get harvested is that people have lost their “higher taste” for fresh and natural food. Part of our job as Transition Town leaders will be to re-educate the taste buds of the people in our town, so they become mad for fresh fruit and herbs. Then, they will be motivated to treat them as something precious (and free!).
Lastly, I think people don’t know enough about HOW to forage and harvest, and may not have the equipment, energy or motivation to do it on their own. Surely a community system in place can greatly overcome this barrier.
So really, it all boils down to educating the public, and creating action teams to facilitate both the education and the systems to get it done (as Shane has been describing).
Personally, my first two wishes to get started with our new Transition Bedford initiation would be to create a REALLY vibrant Abundance project as well as a Garden Share programme.
AND on that note about the Garden Share: can someone in Bedford PLEASE come turn my back garden into a fruit/veg patch NOW? If you have been on a waiting list for an allotment, I have a nice piece of land that is simply laying to waste and I cannot tend to it. Please contact me by putting a comment here).
hi guys if anyone would be interested in foraging for wild flowers, herbs and fruit etc for my restaurant in bedford please email me!
my email is chrissmith87@hotmail.co.uk thanks