Wild Food - Foraging, page 1

Foraging is gathering edible wild food.All the food you eat was once only available by hunter gathering people/tribes collecting it by going out into the countryside.

Millions today lead a life style that leads them to be 'out of touch' & take for granted the essentials needed in order to be alive. I.e - Water , food , shelter etc.

Learning about where the food you buy in shops or eat in restaurants evolved  from is a interesting way to help in the understanding of how societys progressed to be the way they are today.All the food you eat used to be in one form or another wild food.Vegetables like carrots , potatoes etc are foods that have been cultivated from wild food.The meat that you eat in a beef burger comes from a cow which again has been bred from a wild animal.

In fact every single thing you eat,drink,make,DO is nature.Humans have copied,synthesised and built upon nature using natures fabrics to make many variations.Plastic is made from oil . Every single component in your computer has been sourced from nature.

The basic essential of foraging is being able to identify which plants , tree's , mushrooms are edible in the countryside .Their are many Books that can help using colour pictures and also having recipes.So be sure to have a 100% identification as some plants are poisonous and some potentially lethal.If your not 100% positive then don't eat!.

Essentially this gets you out into the environments where you may be able to appreciate your connection with the earth,breath fresh air , wake up and smell the coffee .

& it's fun having the age old knowledge of being able to find your own food if only for a little snack .Foraging also helps you understand the connection of every single living thing to one another, so you learn to respect nature & always take sparingly leaving enough for new growth, so their is more to collect next season.

in all honesty i couldn't do it .. meh ..i heaved at I'm a celeb .. you know eating kangaroo balls .. oooooo

I don't think you'll have much luck finding Kangaroo balls in the UK countryside.

Some of the most common edible plants that can be quite easily found if you know where to look & @ what time /season of year their ready for picking are :-

Blackberry's
Raspberry
Strawberry's
Gooseberry's
Clouberrys's
Elderberry's

Apples
plums

Walnut's
Hazel
Beech
sweet chestnut

to name but a few

Add to this list Shellfish that can be found in the UK's coastal regions & their is some very tasty organic healthy foods to be found.

Very common plants like Dandelion leaves can be eaten as salad when picked young.In spring the Lime tree's new leaves taste just like lettuce.

Then their are many plants that can be used as herbs.

It's more than a hobbie, it's knowledge that should be past on to generation to generation in order to preserve where we have come from thus what we as humans are about .

One day in the not too far future the natural resource's we power the economy's with will run out.In fact they have already begun to run out.The Big oil company's stating that we have already reached the 'peak oil' of production.This means that increasingly our demand for oil is surpassing the amount that we can take from the earth.New Oil discoveries have been declining since the 70's.

A change in the way we live in the power hungry western world is coming.

A think it's better to live a lifestyle that is part of the solution for the future, not the problem's of the present.

Either way adapting is the key to life.

To quote " A Reasonable Man Adapts to suit his environment.A Unreasonable Man does try  to Adapt his Environment to suit him.

The time of the unreasonable man is coming to a end.  

May reason prevail   in these times of change

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