Tag Archives: foraging

A tale, told by an idiot

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Well, it’s been an interesting day.

One of our co-workers had a fit of tidying before we arrived and all sorts of things were randomly repositioned to fit her mental map of “tidiness”.

Still, there’s no point being downhearted, even if you are locked into a turf war about a second-hand desk, and the devil makes work for idle hands.

Having taken delivery of a number of potato sacks from Thompson and Morgan we quite clearly had to hold a sack race. Well, “clearly” is probably overstating things, but it seemed like a good idea. As you can see from the photo the race was fast and furious and finished without injury.  With the T&M sign looking like a sponsorship logo I’m thinking of putting a bid together to see if they fancy sponsoring a semi-pro sack racing league.

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Speed blur!

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Winner and not winner, but I’m not saying which is which…

Then we had a man knock on the door with a couple of members of his family and ask if they could use the toilet. I said yes, though I was slightly perplexed at why we’ve suddenly become a noted public toilet. It seems that they had been travelling from the Midlands to Skegness and needed a toilet – reference to the internet had produced us a solution. Then I found that it wasn’t just his family but two minibuses of people with special needs and their helpers – 38 in all. Try explaining the workings of a waterless toilet to 38 people who aren’t listening because they have their legs crossed!

When I went to take a picture of the “accidental permaculture bed” to use on the Wild Food page I found that the Fat Hen has disappeared from the bed, leaving just rocket and beans. We can cancel the foraged fat Hen soup I was going to make tomorrow as I won’t be able to find enough. I suspect somebody pointed out it was a weed at the weekend and that was the same as a death sentence the way things are around here at the moment.

I have a picture of the desolate former accidental permaculture bed, but it’s too depressing. Instead I’ll ask if anyone can help me identify the red-bottomed bumble bee in the top image. We have a nest of them somewhere on the farm – can’t say where as it might go the same way as the permaculture bed.

If anyone knows what the moth in the picture is I’d be grateful if you can tell me. Sorry it isn’t a better photograph.

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Mystery moth

Finally we had a run-in with the newly repaired alarm. Five attempts!

And that’s how we get to the title – It is a tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Would make a good title for the film of my life.

Two swallows and an Amazon

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We had a visit from a small group today, which is nice because we have more time to spend with them, plenty of equipment and (the best bit for me) less washing up. We did the normal pizzas and salad, and as you can see, the novelty of eating weeds didn’t seem to put them off. We also had a cabbage, apple and spring onion coleslaw because I absent-mindedly allowed them to feed the carrots to the pigs.

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Empty plate

In wildlife news we had a lot of pollinators out again. We also caught quite a few grasshoppers and crickets out in the fields, though most of them were a bit too jumpy to photograph properly. I think this one is a Meadow Grasshopper.

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During the afternoon we had a young blackbird wander into the building (to add to the jackdaw that managed to squeeze into the hen coop yesterday). Finally, at 5 pm, as we were holding an exciting but Top Secret meeting which may have Considerable Repercussions for the Ecocentre, two swallows flew in through the back door. One came all the way through and smacked into the front window, the other managed to turn round and fly back out. They had been flying close to the building all afternoon, sometimes flying  along the verandah under the roof and occasionally perching on the ledge under the roof as if nesting but I’m not sure why they did this. It’s never happened before.

My wife is a lot better than me in a crisis and leapt into action, scooping the stunned bird up and returning it to the air (where it flew away as if nothing had happened) before I could even think of reaching for my camera.

I bet it had a headache though.

 

Pizza? What, again?

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We have 16 people coming to make pizza tonight, using the outside oven. Personally I can’t understand the need to regress by a century and feed pizza into a space full of ash and flame when we have perfectly good clean controllable electric ovens. Tonight I could be sticking 16 pizzas in and taking 16 pizzas out fifteen minutes later. Instead I’m going to spend the afternoon getting things up to temperature so that I can eventually feed a procession of individual pizzas into the baking equivalent of hell.

On the plus side, they want foraged salad, and I have just found a new stash of fat hen so I’m as happy as a pig in salad.

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Fat hen

I just need to make some dressing with chive flower vinegar and the job’s a good ‘un.

In the gardens we’ve been interspersing light gardening with sitting under the cafe awning and drinking water from the fridge. One of the lads on the farm is currently off work after becoming dehydrated on Monday, so you can’t be careful. Despite that I will be ribbing him at great length as it’s a stupid thing to do and because we needed him here with a school party. Self-inflicted – no sympathy.

The outside temperature spiked at 35 degrees C for a few minutes, though by the time I’d collected my camera and taken a couple of outdoor shots it was back to 34, which is still pretty hot by my standards. Even inside it’s holding 31.

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In the garden

We’ll be holding a birthday party for the farmer in a minute, though he’s late, as usual. Apart from the fact he’d be late for his own funeral, he fails to grasp that if you tell our group you’ll be here for 2.30, they start getting agitated at 2.31. Looks like we’ll have to make a few excuses.

 

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After the ups and downs of the past week – currently standing at two Goat Escapes and one pig escape – it was nice to get back to the even keel of a school visit.

We picked a salad from the garden, and the only traditional ingredient in it was rocket which has self-seeded itself from last year. It was fat hen, chickweed, mallow, nasturtium, rose bay willow herb, dead nettle, borage flowers, chive heads and the petals of daisies and marigold.

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In the absence of a salad spinner (which seems to have fallen victim to “tidying up”  (I hate shared kitchens!) I had to use the old tea towel method. Only problem was that I’d forgotten how much water I was about to drive off…

Fortunately there was no damage done apart from a bit of mild surprise and a slippery floor.

Unlike the nettle soup I made with the same class last visit, most people seemed to try a bit of the salad, even if they didn’t all like it. I don’t mind that, it’s when they won’t try that I grow frustrated. Last time only one would try the nettle soup and only two tried the leek and potato, despite the familiar ingredients. I think it’s the fact that they see it being made that seems to put them off. It can’t be good for you if it doesn’t come from a factory…

We still have  along way to go in food education.

Looking on the bright side they were good at the difficult questions (eg why didn’t Henry VIII eat chips?) and the best class I’ve ever had for cleaning up afterwards.

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End of the week

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It’s 4.30pm on Saturday (though I won’t be posting until later), or 1995 if you follow the other form of dating I’ve been using. In 1995 I’m married with kids, happy and couldn’t tell you what was happening in the outside world because I didn’t have time to notice.

Wikipedia tells me that John Major called a leadership election to confirm his leadership of the party. I mention this only because it gives me chance for a John Major anecdote. I met him once and was introduced. About an hour later I met him again and he remembered my name. There was no need for him to have done that and it struck me that a man who could remember names like that, and appear to be pleased to meet you for a second time, would probably rise high in politics. He did.

There’s probably room for a whole digression on leadership and what it takes to succeed in politics here, but it wouldn’t be as interesting as cookery and gardening. I wish I’d realised that years ago.

Here are some pictures of a Wild greens quiche with guinea fowl eggs. My wife is making me describe weeds as wild greens now. Some years ago we went through a similar process with a product I now call “manure”.

It’s onions, blanched nettles and fat hen in  a ready made pastry case. After adding the eggs and milk I dropped torn up chive blossom, calendula petals and whole borage flowers to the top. I will have to work on preserving the colour of the petals.

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The water I blanched the nettles in took on a lovely green colour after just a minute or two of steeping and after removing the leaves I drank it. Much nicer than the cup I made earlier in the week, and much fresher tasting, though it did have overtones of calabrese. Compared with overtones of fox I’ll go for that.  With hindsight I should have strained the insect shaped bits out of it, but I’m not a vegetarian so no harm done.

We have another school next week, a planning session, part one of my takeover of the catering side and I’m going to do some cuttings with willow water. The comfrey plant food is decidedly murky now – you wouldn’t want to swim in a pond that colour- and the indoor salads are really getting a move on now, in contrast to the disappointing outdoor salads.

Finally, after seeing my display of Wild Salad at the Open Farm Sunday I’ve been asked if I can do one at a buffet in  a few weeks time. My weedy fame is spreading!

 

 

 

Monday morning learning

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If this week was the 20th century, we’d already be past the Great War and heading for fascism, When I started this analogy it was 1922 but after lunch and  a few odd jobs it’s now looking more like 1924. In family terms my grandfather has returned home from the war and become a family man with two daughters.. As his life gathers pace I realise that I haven’t made much progress in my plans.

I’ve composted some vegetable peelings from home. They were in a plastic container and I forgot to take them last week. The sealed container meant I didn’t notice them at home but turning them out wasn’t a particularly fragrant job. However, whilst I was doing that I discovered that we have a fine-looking patch of wild flowers next to the compost bin. They are considerably more diverse than the wild flower bed behind the kitchen, though on a much smaller scale.

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I’ve also looked up some recipes for later in the week, touched up the Wild Food page with a note on green alkanet bristles and my tongue and spent a lot of time looking for something I should have made a note of last night when I saw it on the net.

After finding the page I needed I can now report, after a brief burst of activity, that I have harvested enough comfrey to make a batch in a 2 litre bottle. The web page said 8 leaves but I used 14. Whether that means my leaves were smaller than his or I’ve put too many in will only be revealed when I open the stinking brew in a month.

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So, one part of the four part plan has been put into action and several valuable lessons have been learned.The lessons are –  there are always routine jobs to do, taking proper notes saves time, taking proper notes also saves you getting sidetracked into the history of sky writing, and finally no matter how dull a day may seem there is always time to see something that cheers you up.

In this case it was the wild flowers and the wrens. There were three of the new brood playing about in the rough margin of the vegetable garden – I actually got a shot of one of them today!

 

Wild? Yes, I am

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That’s chickweed in the picture – also known as winterweed because it was a mainstay of the Mediaeval diet through the winter. It’s fatal if eaten by the kilogram, but trust me, you wouldn’t want to.

Last night I went to the supermarket and in a moment of weakness spent the best part of £4 on a magazine that purported to contain an article on eating wild salad (or weeds as I call them). Having been talking about them all Sunday, and forcing them on members of the public I thought I’d like to learn a bit more. As I like reading off paper I thought I’d treat myself.

Turns out I needn’t have bothered, I seem to know more than the writer. Considering that I’m a mere novice compared to the dozens, if not 100’s, of people who write about foraging on the internet I feel seriously cheated. It took me two minutes to find several better articles on the web this morning.

As the title says, it wasn’t just the salad that was wild.

I’m going to start a new page on the blog about foraging. There may be one or two unprofessional entries, because I’m not at all sure I want to eat sweethearts/cleavers/goosegrass/stickyweed or whatever regional variation you call it. It looks stringy and it has hooks on. If you’re so interested in it YOU eat it.

 

Focaccia and nettle soup

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It was the baking group again today, though they were slightly thinned out by holidays. It’s always good to see them because they are a happy lot. This is good when you’re baking (as some of my attempts have been horrendous and several, despite exhortations to “re-use the dough” have ended up in the bin – sometimes scraped from my fingers, and sometimes propelled with at speed). The fact that Focaccia was bread of the day was a bonus. It always smells so good.

I wasn’t baking today – I lost my baking mojo a while back and my enthusiasm has faded. I need to start getting it back now, particularly as several schools have been asking for bread making as an option when they come to visit. The smell of freshly baked focaccia and rosemary is just the sort of thing to bring back that enthusiasm. Not that I’m overly enthusiastic about the school sessions – it can be a bit of a dull day for the kids when you keep dragging them back into the kitchen for the next stage.

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That reminds me, I have a teacher to ring back.

At the end of the session I gave out nettle soup. One or two slunk out without taking any (though I bear no grudges) but several drank it cold there and then and the rest took pots home with them. I’m easy with foraging and can take it or leave it, but it’s good to produce food from found ingredients and to introduce people to new experiences. It’s also, as somebody once said in a book, good to eat foraged food once in a while because it gives you a range of nutrients. However, there are reasons that we eat spinach instead of nettles, with the stings being just one of them.

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I have actually set myself a target of learning something new every day this year. My learing for today was that I didn’t know how to spell focaccia. In fact I just had to check it after writing that.

Finally, can anyone tell me how ro swirl cream into soup and have it still look good by the time you’ve switched your camera on. In an effort to raise my game last night I swirled the cream, sprinkled the freshly picked chives and took this picture that looks like a curdled face.

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Focus! First week report.

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A week in and little has changed – seems like I’m going toi have to do some fine-tuning.

The intention was to narrow down my workload and achieve more by focussing relentlessly on getting results. The reality was that I’ve been given more to do and I’m still sprinkling my effort lightly over too many projects. Sprinkiling lightly seems to work with fairy dust, but in real life it doesn’t bring many results.

On the other hand, we did make nettle soup today, something I’d been meaning to do for two years. I’m hoping to move on to other nettle products as the year progresses. With luck, they will appear on my new nettles page, but considering my track record the result may well be that one of the other pages disappears.

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It’s been a productive week with two days delivering the college course, a day of Woodland Trust training and a school so far. I’ve even had chance to try out my new soup and soda bread lesson, which went a lot quicker than I thought it was going to do. I’m going to be running it twice more next week so I’ll have to add a few bits.

Meanwhile Julia has landed me with running a party for twenty five-year-olds tomorrow – looking at lambs, making butter and being generally nice. It’s not really my forte.

Latest news on the guinea fowl is that several have gone in the pot and were delicious. The survivors are currently engaged in escspe-related activities and the outside group has risen to eight. They are so successful at escaping that we have been accused of helping them. If you remember when I first pased an opinion on the captivity I said that in a battle of wits my money was on the birds – seems I’m right.

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This a picture of guinea fowl at liberty during a solar eclipse. Not much different to a normal picture of guinea fowl but I was bored after borrowing a welding mask and staring at the sun with a bit missing so just took some random photos.