Foraging for wild food can be a very rewarding experience.  As well as finding nutritious food for free you also have a great day out, exercising, walking with friends or just enjoying the scenery.

Finding and identifying wild berries, plants and fungi can be a daunting task, so a number of people around the UK have arranged foraging weekends and courses, so that you can learn how to find, identify, pick and cook with wild food.

We have put together a list of some of the course providers but if you know of any more then please let us know using the comments section at the end of this article.

Foraging courses in the UK

Selfsufficientish.com – Wild food foraging courses for spring 2010 calendar.

Fat Hen – Wild food foraging, cooking & feasting courses & events set in West Cornwall.

Tudor Farnhouse – Foraging and Tutored Walks in the Forest of Dean and Wye Valley.

Hedgerow Harvest – Foraging and willd food courses. Scheduled courses are based near Marlborough in Wiltshire and near Dorchester in Dorset.

Taste the Wild - Fun and informative courses based in North Yorkshire.

Wild Food School - Wild Food School courses are essentually ‘fluid’ offering introductory half-day, day, 2-day and week-long sessions where students can gain hands-on experience in identifying and using Britain’s edible wild plants, and do so in an informal learning environment. A Distance Learning programme is also available which may be of more benefit to folks who don’t have the time to visit.

Whilst picking Brambles yesterday, I came across something I have not seen for many years….Wild Burnet.

I used to pick these en masse for my father to make wine and here it was growing in the grassland near the hedgerow.

The Wild Burnet or Sanguisorba Officinalis grows to around 1m tall in grassland and on hedgerow banks.

It is generally not easy to see the foliage but the tall wiry stems raise themselves above the vegetation and waft their dark burgundy, (almost brown) rounded flower heads in the breeze.

The leaves can be used in salads and taste mildly of cucumber.

Ancient Chinese Medicine saw the root of this plant employed to treat bleeding, such as nosebleeds and dysentry.  And when applied to the skin is used in the treatment of insect bites and burns.

Although the leaves were used in salads and sandwiches, it was only the bitter, peppery flower heads that we used to collect for the wine.  This had the advantage of making the plant grow bushier and therefore more flowers were available the following year.

I will have to ask my dad to hunt out the wine recipe.  The only thing I can remember about making it is fighting hundreds of wasps due to the copious amounts of honey in the mix.  As my husband said, it is probably more of a mead than a wine but the net result was incredibly good.

Perhaps you have different uses for it, if so, please let us know.

Blackberries on the bush

Autumn is approaching rapidly and the hedgerows are starting to yield their harvest.

A sunny day finally arrives, so with the dogs on their leads and pockets loaded with carrier bags, we set off to collect some Blackberries. or Brambles and Blackites as they are known locally.

Compared to last year and especially the year before, the fruits were disappointing. Very small berries and many of them already going mouldy on the branches.  Some fruits are hard and stunted, so it took us over an hour and a good mile covered to gain only about 2Kg of fruit.

In recent years, the same patch has yielded around 10Kg of nice plump juicy berries.

Pondering the reason for this we firstly blamed the weather. This year has seen only four weeks of decent sunshine in May, turning to rain in the second week of June. The ground was incredibly waterlogged and this is the first time we have been slipping around in mud whilst trying to pick the fruit.

The second factor we considered was the proliferation of Himalayan Balsam in the hedgerows. This plant is not native to the UK and has become a real pest in the past three or four years.  Its growth is rampant and no doubt it is sucking vital nutrients away from the native Blackberry bushes.

All of the bushes seemed to be “struggling”, with leggy stems reaching for much needed sunlight and bearing rust patches on their leaves.

Anyway, we had enough for a couple of pies or crumbles and maybe even a couple of pots of bramble and apple jelly,

Blackberries should not really be eaten whilst picking as they can contain lots of little maggots and should be soaked in cold salted water for about four hours before use. This will allow all those little beasties to crawl out and drown, leaving you with a bowlful of clean blackberries ready to use. Tip the berries into a strainer and rinse well to remove any traces of salt.

Within hours of picking, the fruits can often start to rot, so they are best used straight after cleaning or frozen. (Always clean the fruit before freezing and remove as much of the water from the berries as you can).

If you are planning to go foraging for wild Blackberries, consider some sturdy shoes and old clothes as you will get prickled and the juice stains. A walking cane (the sort with a hooked end) is very useful for reaching and pulling branches closer. Plastic bags (without holes in) or containers to put your berries in.

If you take the dog(s) along too, be ware that most of the best ripe berries will be in full sun, so be mindful of the time you spend and keep taking your dog into the shade and carry a bottle of water.

Don’t pick berries near the ground (dog peeing height) or from the side of a busy road to avoid contamination from vehicle fumes.

let us have your “Brambling” tales and tell us if you are experiencing a poor blackberry harvest, even if you grow your own.

July brings warm sunny days and balmy nights, ideal for going for a walk and having a look to see what is ripening in your local hedgerows.

Wild apple trees can often be found alongside park embankments and hedges.  Quite simply the result of somebody’s discarded apple core whilst out walking or thrown from car windows on roadside verges.

Wild apple found on park boundary

Apples do not grow true from seed, so a thrown away a Cox’s orange Pippin core is unlikely to result in a tree bearing the same fruit, but will have been cross polinated with other species to form a different variety.
It is estimated that there are hundreds of these types of “wild” trees and the fruits are very edible.

We found our apple trees at the edge of a public park, maybe planted on purpose or they maybe just grew from a discarded core.

Wild apple ripening

When picking this type of fruit, always be aware that it may belong to somebody or be on their land, in which case you will need to obtain permission before taking the fruit. Take care not to pick fruit too close to a roadside, as apples will have been polluted by exhaust gasses from passing vehicles.

The correct way to pick an apple is to cup it gently with your hand and a slight twist should free it from the branch.  Do not pull the stalk and leaves from the branch as this is next year’s fruiting spur.

Generally, “wild apples” are best used for cooking and making jellies.  One of the reasons for this is that the fruit can be quite acidic and sometimes too tart to be used as an eating apple.  They do lend themselves well to being included in crumbles, pies and jellies and are well worth looking out for.

Many larger or older gardens may also contain an apple tree or two, sometimes a wonderful heritage variety.  The owners of such trees very rarely use all the fruit themselves and may be willing to offer you some in return for a jar of the finished product or a small fee.