Thanks to all who joined me for the first iteration of the Commons Feast virtual monthly meet up on Tuesday 18 October. It was great to meet new people and connect with new and old friends framed by our motivations for foraging and why we wanted to join the monthly meet up.
We shared our wonder and fear of wild plants. How foraging and consuming wild plants opens us up to the unknown. How it is a way of storytelling and narrating our relationship to the non-human. We talk about how our health is supported by wild foods. How important it is to be connected to creatives and like-minded people and how Covid has gotten in the way of that. We revelled in how foraging gets us to embrace slowness, quietness and fosters a heightened sense of awareness. And we examined the time and commitment required to process gathered foods, confessing to not always getting it right!
We shared our foods and ingredients and their uses: rosehips and blackberry jam tarts; wild infusions to support menopausal symptoms, better sleep and dreaming such as mugwort, plantain, cleavers, and red clover; nettle seeds on yogurt for a natural morning stimulant; first time sloe gin making; pickling seaweeds such as dulse and sugar kelp; sweet chestnuts made into a pastry case with a wild greens filling.
We also shared ideas of what to forage for now and in the coming weeks. Two participants have recently moved to coastal regions, albeit at different ends of the country, and so are excited to look for sea buckthorn, seaweeds, such as kelps, dulse, and oarweed, and sea vegetables such as sea beet, sea purslane and sea kale. And the landlocked among us will be looking for rosehips, yarrow, sweet chestnuts, acorns, and other edible leaves, berries and nuts. There was also mention of escaped watercress in a river. But nobody seemed very confident with fungus.
Below are some November suggestions from John Wright’s The Forager’s Calendar:
I will be hosting these events for at least a year so we can engage in a collective act of witnessing the seasons together through our wild foods and landscapes. The next one is on Tuesday 15 November, 7-8pm.
Go to Eventbrite to book: https://tinyurl.com/3fasmhe7. All welcome and of course, free!
Amanda Couch 