It’s two days to go until the end of the month, the end of my challenge. While I won’t deny looking forward to eating peanut butter and cheese, I feel a tinge of sadness that it will soon be over. I can hear you say ‘why don’t you carry on?’ The answer to that is in order to be impactful, fundraising wise, there has to be a clear beginning and end. Another, practical consideration is that I will go back to face-to-face teaching again and my time roaming the forest will be limited enough to warrant supplementing my foraged diet with shop-bought food.
That said, the title of this blog is ‘the happy forager’, so let me tell you the reason for my sunny state of mind: the past few days have seen an abundance of new food that has ripened. Plums, pears and peppers!
When you live off the land and by corollary the seasons, you have to wait for things to be ripe. You can’t have pears in June. So when they do arrive, it’s a feast!
John worked his magic on the peppers: they went into a Spanish omelette with bartered egg, homegrown tatties and onion.
The Giant polypores also seem to enjoy a second lease of life; the patch I’ve been keeping an eye on ALL YEAR has started fruiting by the bucketload.
I’ve taken a (comparatively) small amount from this, which was enough to feed both of us with leftovers for two more meals.
Outside in the front garden, the turnips I sowed 3 days ago are already germinating. Round the back, I’ve harvested the first of the Yellow Frisian Forestbeans:
All in all, we have food aplenty and feel very fortunate to live in the right place at the right time, with enough knowledge to get the most out of it. Thougths are now turning to the final special meal for two on Wednesday – watch this space!
The healthy forager 