Well, I’ve done it! For 31 days I’ve lived on foraged and homegrown food to raise awareness of the importance of our natural world and our place within it, in aid of the River Dee Trust. I’ve raised 460 pounds (so far). For our final meal I’ve cooked a feast: chanterelle soup with ground elder, nettles, thyme, garlic and onion tops; pan-fried homegrown tatties; bartered egg with Giant polypore and porcini mushrooms, homegrown onion and courgette, and foraged herbs. Served with homemade Candyglirach blackberry wine.
Today I also checked on my favourite plum tree at Myrebird, which was absolutely loaded down with fruit. I picked about 3 kilograms and left the rest for other lucky foragers (but I will go back next week in case nobody is picking!).
The title of this post is ‘mission accomplished’. While this is true in the personal sense – I have succeeded in living off homegrown and foraged food for a month – it is not true in the wider sense of the word. Comparatively speaking, the fundraiser I did has attracted little attention, despite publishing on all my social media channels and having 4 columns in our regional newspaper. This just shows what we’re up against. The natural world is not on people’s agenda. They rather donate to a human cause charity. This is highly ironic, as without a healthy planet, none of those causes have any meaning. So my quest goes on, to raise awareness and promote green action plans where possible. If you read this and think ‘what can I do?’, I urge you to think about how you use your own garden space if you have one. Can you plant a fruit tree? Can you grow some of your own stuff? Can you plant things to attract pollinators? Can you live without a car? Can you live without going abroad for a holiday?
It may feel pointless to you if you look around and notice that everybody else is going about their lives as they always did. You may not feel like you are making a difference. But you do. At the individual level, you won’t see it, but at the collective level, you will. We can’t afford to mess it up – we only have one world.
The healthy forager 