Foraging - Where to start?

It’s easy to get caught up in ‘research’, overthinking, or, come to think of it, any number of other barriers we seem so capable of placing in our way.

The utter beauty of foraging is that it demands nothing of us but our presence and common sense (actually, not even that—as evolution will attest, everything is edible, at least once!).

My Ten Penneth

Here’s my ten penneth (two cents) as an experienced forager:

• Get a good guidebook or two, learn about your rights, some things to bear in mind regarding safety, get outside, and get curious. It’s as easy as that. There’s a page with my recommended books and some resources on the law here:
  Recommended Foraging Books The Law
• Start small. Don’t be too ambitious. There are plenty of quick wins—species that are readily available or easily identifiable without too much prior experience or knowledge. There are no shortcuts to becoming a knowledgeable forager.
• Let go. It’s easy to get caught up in finding a specific thing. Heading out on a foraging walk with the intention of identifying or finding a specific species is a surefire way to have an unenjoyable time, and there the path to madness lies. It will blindside you to the other discoveries available.
• Foraging is a process, not a finish line.
• Start at home. Get to know your local environment.
• Foraging doesn’t need to be ‘the mission’ of an excursion. I try to take frequent walks dedicated solely to foraging—alone, without distractions. It’s an immersive, engrossing, and deeply nourishing experience. But I also have to walk the dogs every day, take a trip somewhere, or meet up with friends. I’m still foraging—simply by being curious and observant of my surroundings.
• Get some hands-on tuition with someone who knows their stuff. While you might only cover a few plant species within the hours you spend with them, the more important takeaway will be confidence, passion, and real-world experience.
• Finally, when you start, don’t make it the goal to get something to shove in your gob. Make it your goal to be confident in your ID of the plants you’ve observed. Make it your goal to learn everything you can about them. Many plants are edible throughout their visible season, but most have a certain window of harvesting when they are at their best and most rewarding.

By simply being curious and observant, you will already start to add to that valuable mental database (one, I guarantee, you already have something of). You’ll begin to notice and feel the patterns and rhythms of nature and the cycles of the seasons. You’ll start to see the rhythm of each plant or fungi.

My First Active Year

I began seriously foraging in a very early spring, oblivious to the challenges and difficulties that this brings, and I’m actually really glad I began at this time. For the beginner forager, it’s much more difficult—nigh on impossible—to positively identify many of the staple plants before they are at a more mature stage of their growth cycle. Starting at this early time meant I was already building up this knowledge database. I’d wonder what a new shoot was or what this innocuous plant was used for, and because I was taking regular walks, frequently along the same pathways, I began to see each plant develop. By the summer, I’d inadvertently tracked this growth development. I was positively identifying plants left, right, and centre. But more crucially, I was also linking these developed plants to their earlier growth cycles.

I also very quickly came to realise that identical plant species can look remarkably different not just from day to day or week to week but also from place to place, even when they are right next to each other.

To summarise: Don’t eat anything you aren’t willing to bet your life on; enjoy just simply being; and as Gaz Brookfield wisely puts it, “Have some respect for those around you, and try not to be a dick.”