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Now on to this week’s musings…
My desire to live in close harmony with the natural world, to foraging for food and art supplies, is teaching me more than I ever imagined it could. Foraging, at its core, seems to be about two things: patience and sharing. Agriculture produces food and other products on mass, in locations and even times, of our choosing. We can buy strawberries in winter and pumpkins in spring. There is no need for patience, and not only to we not share, we actively take away.
Foraging is different.
Foraging depends on the cycle of the seasons. To forage we must be patient. We must wait for petals to turn into berries and ripen on the branch. We must wait for the first nettle leaves of spring to be ready to pick and eat, then wait again for it to grow tall and strong for fibres. We must wait for the water to be warm enough to wade out for seaweed. We must wait until picking does no harm. Without patience foraging doesn’t work.
Patience isn’t something I’m always good at, when I have an idea, I want to leap, afraid of missing the moment. Foraging is teaching me to be patient, teaching me that waiting for the right moment makes the reward all the greater. As I watch the hedgerows and sand dunes, the rock pools and trees, patiently and impatiently waiting I find that the reward isn’t always what I expected. Alert and aware, the reward can be the first ripe blackberry of summer, but it can also be the sparrow I wouldn’t have spotted if I wasn’t waiting and watching. So much happens while being patient.
When the moment does come, it is a moment for sharing. Whatever you are out foraging for, you aren’t the only one who wants it. There are other humans, birds, beasts, and bugs who eat what you are collecting. I find sharing much easier than patience, to take what I need and no more. The blackberry bushes and nettle patches are alive with buzzing and fluttering, a living reminder to leave enough behind that others can enjoy the bounty.
Chef Tommy Banks (who is one of my culinary crushes), cooks seasonal food at his restaurants in Yorkshire. Those seasonal recipes are also the inspiration for his book Roots, in which he divides the year not into Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter but into what he terms The Hunger Gap, Time of Abundance, and the Preserving Season.
The Hunger Gap is January to May, when there are very few naturally growing fresh vegetables in Britain.
The Time of Abundance is June to September, in which plenty grows in our fields, greenhouses, and wild ways, ready to be harvested and foraged.
The Preserving Season is October to December and is Bank’s favourite time of year. It is a time when food can still be served fresh, but also a time to prepare for the Hunger Gap.
Foraging this month has proven Bank’s seasons to be accurate. The abundance of fresh produce growing everywhere I walk has left me spoilt for choice. Berries and fruits are ripe and ready, the second flowering of gorse is still touching the hillside with bright yellow, and the second growth of nettles is almost tall enough to pick for cording over the winter. So much of what is growing wild right now lends itself not only to immediate eating, but also to preserving. Fruits and berries, fresh or preserved, lend themselves to baking. Which inevitably means my foraging this month has led to some wonderful adventures in the kitchen, and some tasty eating. For those stories, paid subscribers can read on.
Otherwise, I will leave you with these questions…
What teaches you patience?
What reminds you to share?
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