Foraging

I will never weed in the same light again.

I attended my first meeting of the Cambridgeshire Self Sufficiency Group one evening a couple of weeks back. It was all about foraging, aka eating weeds. Later in the year, we're talking blackberries, sloes and crab apples. But at this time of year it's mostly leaves.
I started with a light snack of cleavers, followed by a sniff of a wild leek, a nibble of Jack-by-the-hedge, all washed down with a nettle scone.

At a time of year when there is what is known as a 'hungry gap', when the old crops are running out and we are waiting for this season's crops, nature is providing us with a wealth of fresh, green shoots.
Many of them have quite surprising flavours. More accents rather than in your face flavour, but not as much like grass as you'd think!

I doubt I'll ever get seriously into this type of foraging as I'm more into cultivating my own food and I can produce greens for this time of year if I so desire, but I may just occasionally dip into the store of free food which shoots up all around the smallholding. The odd lime leaf or violet flower would certainly add a trendy dash to a summer salad.

But, for now, I'll just use it as a good excuse for not dealing with my nettles!

An Edible Hedge, A Carrot and some Cross Eggs

Friday 21st September 2012

The first really wet day for a while, so just a few odds and sods events to catch up on.

Cross Eggs
I was re-reading one of my books on keeping chickens the other night when I came across a really simple idea to solve a problem I've been having.  For Priscilla, as you know, is sitting on a clutch of eggs which will hopefully all hatch into fine hens for me. But there has been a problem - other chickens laying eggs next to her which she then carefully rolls across the straw and under her feathers. Trouble is, they'll never hatch as they'll be adandoned once the main clutch have hatched. Meanwhile, she is leaving me with too few eggs to sell. But this problem stops today. For each egg under Priscilla now has a large pencil cross on it. I can't believe I didn't think of it myself. From now on, all newly laid eggs will be easy to identify.



The edible hedgerow,
fenced off from marauding sheep.

The Edible Hedgerow
Last winter I planted an edible hedgerow, composed of hazels, elders, sloes, blackberries, crab apples, dog rose, wild pear, cherry plum and hawthorn. In a few year's time I'll hopefully be able to potter around in the garden and return with baskets full of wild hedgerow fruits to turn into jams and wines.
However, Number Ten and Number Eighteen (The Lambs) have completely misinterpreted the term edible hedgerow and, since they have been moved to a new area of grazing, have been trying to eat the whole hedge! Nothing that a bit of temporary fencing couldn't sort out though.









And finally, remember those rows and rows of carrots that I sowed earlier in the year to no avail? Well, I'd pretty much forgotten about them and left the beds to the flowering annuals I'd planted to confuse the carrot fly. But just look what I came across the other day! No prizes for beauty, but it may find its way onto the bench at the smallholders' produce show next weekend.