Foraging is the latest activity to make a come-back.  Just in the last few days foraging has featured on BBC breakfast and also many national papers, seeing reporters joining ‘community foragers’ finding pears and apples galore on the city streets of Sheffield!  This may sound unusual but interestingly, in Europe foraging is much more common-place.  In Italy many people forage for dandelion leaves and other local delicacies.



Blackberries are easy to forage in the UK.

Many people are discovering that foraging is an excellent way to not only gain some ingredients for your next meal but to discover your neighbourhood on foot and cut down those food miles.  Many people are also taking along their children, so families can learn about wild food together and enjoy some fun outdoor activity, rather than watching celebrity chefs preparing food on the TV screen – they can prepare their own pickings instead.

A self-sufficiency website says “Foraging for food doesn’t mean you are scavenging around bins and eating food that no-one else wants to eat. Foraging basically means eating food that either grows, or wanders wild and is not farmed or cultivated for commercial consumption. What’s more, wild food grows at its own pace, it evolves continuously to live in harmony with its environment, and by foraging and eating it, we are also living in harmony with our environment.”

If you would like to learn more about foraging then a good place to start is by reading hints and tips from forager extraodinaire Fergus Drennan’s website, and you can also print off a foraging handbook from Judy in the Woods website.