Foraging - October 2019
We’ve been on two foraging walks this October. A 5 mile walk around south Manchester in mid October and a shorter walk later in the month when visiting family in Hampshire.
We're almost completely novice foragers but were armed with the Woodland Trust's British Trees app and the River Cottage ‘Hedgerow’ Handbook by John Wright.
On our walk in Manchester we started by collecting conkers from a couple of trees on our road for our washing detergent (blog post here) before heading further afield.
By far the most abundant food we recognised was hawthorn. We saw at least a dozen trees, both in hedgerows and standing alone in purposefully planted green space. Most were by busy roads so we avoided them, but we stopped at two trees which had been planted on a patch of grass amongst houses and collected a couple of boxes of haws. An old man leaving his house came past and asked if we were making jam.
Apart from haws we found the very last of the seasons blackberries, managing to half fill a small tub from a huge patch of brambles. On our way home we spotted a rowan (or mountain ash) that was covered with berries. We might come back after the first frost and collect some for jam or wine.
Finally, on the non-edible side, we spotted a tow rope by the side of the road, so added that to the bag as well. We don't have a car at the moment but are planning to convert a van into a camper in spring so we'll keep hold of it.
We're almost completely novice foragers but were armed with the Woodland Trust's British Trees app and the River Cottage ‘Hedgerow’ Handbook by John Wright.
On our walk in Manchester we started by collecting conkers from a couple of trees on our road for our washing detergent (blog post here) before heading further afield.
By far the most abundant food we recognised was hawthorn. We saw at least a dozen trees, both in hedgerows and standing alone in purposefully planted green space. Most were by busy roads so we avoided them, but we stopped at two trees which had been planted on a patch of grass amongst houses and collected a couple of boxes of haws. An old man leaving his house came past and asked if we were making jam.
Apart from haws we found the very last of the seasons blackberries, managing to half fill a small tub from a huge patch of brambles. On our way home we spotted a rowan (or mountain ash) that was covered with berries. We might come back after the first frost and collect some for jam or wine.
Finally, on the non-edible side, we spotted a tow rope by the side of the road, so added that to the bag as well. We don't have a car at the moment but are planning to convert a van into a camper in spring so we'll keep hold of it.
Down near the south coast we still saw plenty of hawthorn, but didn’t take any. More excitingly we managed to find a few small blackthorn (sloe) nestled in the bottom of a hedgerow, and managed to collect enough sloes for a small bottle of sloe gin! Apart from the sloes the hedge was bursting with rosehips, so we picked plenty of those as well.
We also dug up some dandelion roots and collected some fallen acorns with the plan to try to make some coffee alternatives from them - blog post to follow soon!
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