Foraging

Does any one here forage for food at all? And if so what kinds of things do you find and use, fungi,herbs, berries etc. and is what you find worth the effort. Seems to be becoming more n more popular n know might depend on location/seasons as to what/how much will find, also specific locations are often kept secret(quite rightly).
Many thanks.

Yes it does depend on location and seasons.... more location really. When I lived by the sea I could get sea-beet almost all year round and marsh samphire in the spring and summer; ramsons (wild garlic) in the woods in spring; blackberries in the autumn etc. Also wild marjoram and thyme on the South Downs, even wild strawberries & raspberries in some places!

There's not so much where I live now as the woodlands aren't ancient enough for ramsons. I may be lucky and get wild thyme, and there's sloe and blackberry in the autumn but not a great deal else.

I don't do fungi as almost all of them are unidentifiable, but when I was growing up we had Shaggy Ink Caps and Giant Puffballs in fields nearby, have eaten those!

I just pick blackberries and still have some in the freezer from last year (or is it the year before? ) Sometimes there are wild raspberries and mushrooms although I am a little wary of these in case I pick those magic ones in error

Isochick forages! I'm sure she'll reply when she see's this

I forage blackberries and sloes that a friend makes into gin.

I also 'forage' potatoes sometimes. There is a footpath that goes along a potato field and when the machinery harvests the potatoes they leave loads lying on top. I guess it is uneconomical to pay someone to manually collect those ones as they just leave them to rot, which seems so wasteful, so we collect a few while we are walking.

We usually collect the berries while we are out walking Max so we don't collect many or he would get bored and want to be on his way but it seems a shame to go for a nice walk through the country without him.

My husband bought a book on foraging but I think the only thing he has foraged would be the chestnuts we colelcted once from a walk around the lake at Blickling Hall in Norfolk (National Trust property).

I found a Kong on the park today with some dog biscuits in-does that count as foraging?

PS-I agree about the difficulty re mushroom recognition - there was a girl of 12 in our local paper who nearly died after eating mushrooms she had picked which were deadly ones! The hopsital staff said she should have died the amount she had eaten.

I have found a secret stash of sloes and I forage those and give them to my friend who makes sloe gin in return for a bottle!

The site of these sloes is very out of the way and it appears noone else knows they are there but me!

That's technically 'gleaning' and nothing wrong with that - I could have included all the apples left rotting on the trees here and begging to be scrumped....

Smokey - are you short of sloes up there in Wilts then? You need to go south m'dear - plenty here in Zummerzet

Thanks for that, I didn't think it was foraging but I wasn't sure what to call it!

Thankyou for all your replies, sounds like there are lots of goodies out there if in the right place n know where to look. I don't know what kind of things might find around here(not much wouldn't think),but will look for a book n see what i can find