Birds and Berries

November 6, 2012December 27, 2013Margaret Lear Autumn, Berries, Broadleaved Woods, Fauna, Flora, Medicinal Uses, Wild Food & Wild Things Tags: berries, Bird, birds, bullfinch, crab apple, crab apples, cramp bark, elderberries, nature, plants, plum, plum blossom, robin, starlings Leave a comment

We have a liberal attitude to kleptomaniac birds. We are quite happy to share the abundance of our raspberry crop with the needy families of warring blackbirds in the hedge, and don’t begrudge the bullfinches a little bit of plum blossom (mind you, they were pushing it last year.). I don’t object to them taking every reachable holly berry from our tree, because I am happy to trek a mile or so to a far more prolific bearer for my Christmas decorations. The walk is good for me. Honestly. With much of northern Perthshire currently in the grip of permafrost, it’s comforting to lurk behind festive windows and watch the resourceful birds make the most of the berries they can find in the garden. In Autumn, blackbirds and robins cheerfully hacked away at the crab apples, but these are long gone. Rowan berries last a bit longer, and if you have a pink or white berried Rowan (Sorbus hupehensis or cashmeriana are the species to look for) the birds may leave some till winter ends. If your tree is prolific, grab your own share for delicious rowan jelly to go with Christmas dinner or game; and a decent country wine can be had from them as well. Added to which, of course, a rowan tree in your garden will provide protection against evil spirits! (Turning off the TV has a similar effect). We have a Guelder Rose (Viburnum opulus) in the garden. It’s not a rose of course, but a small tree or shrub also known as Cramp-bark. You will not be surprised to hear that its bark was used to appease stomach cramps, among other things. The berries, which follow the creamy flowers, are a beautiful translucent red and are borne in such abundance, some are on the tree still, despite being raided by finches, starlings, robins and the Bankfoot United Sparrow Thugs (currently running in a gang with chaffinches and siskins it seems). If the birds can spare any, Cramp-bark berries may be used in tarts and sauces (but are indigestible to us unless cooked and sweetened), and may ward off scurvy should your Christmas diet have been short on Brussels sprouts! Between us, the birds and I have polished off the elderberries long since, but it’s a shrub I would highly recommend for wildlife if you have room. In fact I am not sure how anyone can manage without it – aside from its many household uses (dyeing, firewood, cosmetics, wood stains, charming warts and so on…..), 70 illnesses were recorded in 1666 by Martin Blockwitch in his “Anatomie of the Elder” against which this much maligned “weed” is effective! Of the more “gardeny” shrubs, Pyracanthas, Berberis and most cotoneasters will still have fruit on to feed hungry birds – and, of course, nectar for bees when the flowers come again. Which they will.

Drowning in Pomes….

October 12, 2009December 27, 2013Margaret Lear Autumn, Berries, Broadleaved Woods, Cider & Ale, Dishes/Comestibles, Flora, Fruit, Hedgerow, Jam, Nuts, Pasture, Wild Food & Wild Things, Wine Tags: brambles, cider, cidermaking, elderberries, hazelnuts, nursery, pears, quinces, sloes Leave a comment

It’s not that we haven’t been foraging, just that Andrew KEEPS BRINGING HOME MORE APPLES AND PEARS and I think we are drowning in them, so have scarcely had time to blog. (plus lots work on at college at present).

The worst is, they are all different varieties which he’s trying to identify or photograph or just moon over and there are crates and crates of the b**gers I’m not even allowed to touch, then all of a sudden they are fermenting all over the floor and it’s all a bit mind-boggling really. I am an apple widow.

Anyway that aside I’ve foraged and made these since I last wrote: rowan jelly, rowan berry wine, hazelnuts, elderberries for freezer, brambles, elderberry wine, quince jelly (using japonica quinces) and Andrew has permitted a small selection of the apple bing to be made into cider. It is a disgusting, thick brown soup of a cider at present, emitting a sludgy foam from the top of the demijohn. It is to be regretted that before we made it I had been suffering from a gastric bug (NOT from wild food!), which has affected the way I view the cider jar. Nevertheless, I am sure the end result will be as good as it was last year, and am optimistic His Lord High Appletreeness will eventually permit the remainder of the bing to be thus processed. Maybe even some of the pears.

The biggest problem we have with cidermaking is crushing the apples. We have a lovely little press, but unless the fruit is well mashed you don’t get the juice from it and it is a long, slow process. A 10lb weight into a bucket is OK but broke the bucket; James’s mechanical chip-maker is a start but we really have to get a proper mincer. The off-putting brown colour comes from tannin, and won’t do any harm, some apples just have lots in them. Keswick Codlins made up the large amount of the apples we used, but there were others – James Grieve, Lord Derby, Grenadier, Bramley and “various Laxton type things” (quote). No real cider apples – told A he needs to develop a Scottish cider apple.

The Quince Jelly also benefitted from a dose of Bramley for setting quality – and it is an exquisite jelly. I know Japonica quinces aren’t strictly wild food but they might as well be, as so many people grow the things as ornamental shrubs with never a clue they are cultivating a valuable food source.

Not been much on the fungi front – we have had a few weeks of dry weather and haven’t found anything new or in remarkable quantity or quality for a while. A very interesting mushroom is developing on a log in the garden; yet to be identified. More later!

PS. Sloes about ready to pick….

Feb 25th-27th

February 27, 2009Margaret Lear Berries, Fauna, Flora, Fruit, Nuts, Salad, Sauce, Smoothies, Spring, Teas & Tisanes Tags: brambles, cheese making, cider vinegar, cleavers, curd cheese, elderberries, hazelnuts, maple syrup, ramsons, rendering fat, sticky willy, stock, sycamore sap, venison, wild garlic, wild salads 2 Comments

Lent begins. On Shrove Tuesday, there was a pre-Lent good life banquet at the church, with everything donated and home grown, or wild. The main course was a wild deer – very fat he was too, and I brought back the fat for rendering, as well as the bones for stock. The fat was easily processed; it is very hard and white, and gives a good flavour in cooking. It solves, at least for now, the issue of whether I am allowed cooking oil during my Lent challenge. As for the bones, after boiling for stock I got four portions of meat from them.

Ash Wednesday, the hens having begun an untimely strike, I breakfasted on a fruit compote consisting of home grown raspberries, blackcurrants, strawberries, with brambles and elderberries from the freezer. I didn’t eat again till about four, then used a portion of the venison and some stock to make a sort of stew with a Jerusalem artichoke, a carrot and an onion from the garden, and some spinach. It did me for lunch on Thursday too. Later, I sorely missed my evening snack, but could only find a few hazelnuts I couldn’t really spare to scoff.

I am finding having to go in the garden to find an edible herb every time I want a hot drink a bit of a pain – especially as hardly anything is really growing yet – and also boring! Tried gorse flower tea on Thursday – tastes like hot water. Cleavers (known here delightfully as Sticky Willy) is about the best; sage is OK but not very flavoursome at this time of year. Passed a garden with a healthy clump of Sticky Willy growing in it. When the householder came out of his door, I only just avoided saying, “Scuse me mate, can I have a bit of your sticky willy?” This kind of thing can get you into trouble. As an alternative, I’ve spun the fruit compote into smoothies – astonishing number of pips! I am allowing myself home-made wine, but have been too wobbly so far to dare drink any.

By today, Friday, I need a rest from venison, good though it is. Hens deigned to lay some eggs, so omelette for breakfast (with half a leek) and a sort of Spanish omelette (the other half of the leek, carrot and defrosted runner beans) for dinner. With which I had roasted beetroot and artichoke with mixed herbs from the garden. Not too much wild stuff yet, but I did have a brilliant salad for lunch – miners lettuce, sorrel, garlic mustard, rocket, spinach leaves and the first ground elder, chopped finely with half a cooked beetroot and a chopped apple. Made a sort of dressing with Rose next door’s accidental cider vinegar that was meant to be apple wine and my redcurrant sauce. It offset the bitterness of the leaves and I really savoured every mouthful – something I’ve noticed that’s different in my eating experience!

Also I can feel myself becoming, of necessity, much more resourceful. As I write, the first bucket of sycamore sap is reducing gently on top of the stove. A gallon of raw milk donated to the banquet that didn’t get used is curdling in the kitchen, hopefully to become curd cheese. Ian at the church gave me a bag of apples from storage from his orchard – as I am badly missing snacks, I intend to dry some as rings to carry to work with me. Traded one of Rose’s spare cockerels for some venison, and it’s stashed in the freezer. And I am noticing the emergence of every weed – today I saw the first shoots of Ramsons or wild garlic – and remembered I have some rather rubbishy cultivated garlic in the veg plot – suddenly reject vegetables and the tops of leeks become highly desirable!

As the warm weather continues, I hope to see an acceleration in the wild food options in my diet. I am hungry, and craving bread, oatcakes and biscuits especially. But so far, so good – even when I had to go to the pub quiz on Wednesday and drink a pint of water – on the rocks.

July – last weeks

February 7, 2009Margaret Lear Berries, Diary entries, Fruit, Fungi, Nuts, Pickle, Pudding, Wine Tags: Boletus, Ceps, chanterelles, elderberries, John Evelyn, pickled ash keys, poisonous amanitas, red elderberries, tawny grisettes Leave a comment

July – Week Four
Ah, now we’re talking. This weekend, Andrew and I, having spotted some growing by the A9, went cycling after Red Elderberries. These are the fruit of Sambucus racemosa, a non-native but commonly naturalised sister of the familiar Elder (Sambucus nigra). They ripen earlier than the native berries and don’t taste quite as good, but can be used for the same things. Being in the midst of a glut of soft fruit, we wanted to pick some to mix 50-50 with blackcurrants for a red wine. After picking them we thought, it having rained copiously last week (especially on Mull of course), that we should just check for fungi….. and YES!! the first Chanterelles, and a couple of Brown Birch Boletus, and a few fairly chewed Russula lutea. These all went into a delicious pie for dinner. Pointed out we still have last years dried chanterelles to use up. On the way back we picked wild cherries and wild raspberries (inexplicable as the garden ones are coming out of our ears at home but we couldn’t resist….. we ate them as a TV snack to accompany Midsomer Murders (well, you need something..)

Today I sampled the pickled ash keys I prepared in March – and they were good! I seem to have perfected the timing and recipe (well it was John Evelyn’s recipe to the letter actually).

July – Week Five
We’ve both had a week more or less off work this week – though spent much time in the garden.

We decided it was time to see what was happening in a local Forestry Commission wood which gets a good range of autumn fungi normally…. I wanted Tawny Grisettes especially, and there were quite a few. This is an un-nerving fungus for the beginner, being in the same family as Death Cap and Destroying Angel (Amanita). But once you know it, you can’t mistake it for anything else, even from a distance. It stands on a tall stem, no ring around it unlike the death cap, and the reddish-brown cap, conical at first but soon flat, is edged with little striations. Slugs love them (regrettably) and so do I. We also found a single Bay Boletus (Boletus badius), and a relative we hadn’t tried before – Suillus variegatus. This was nice, though not over-tasty. There were quite a few edible Russula atropurpurea, but the slugs had largely had them already! But there were MOUNTAINS of chanterelles….. kept us going for days…..

Dimly aware the English school holidays were starting, we also gathered several pounds of blaeberries (bilberries) by the River Braan. The connection here is that the English hols is when we are most likely to meet up with Tim and Gill and their daughters. Tim is a compulsive and exhausting forager even by our standards, and we have fond, gooey memories of Tim’s blaeberry muffins! Anyway, as usual we spent ages filling a bag with small, sparse and hard to find berries on ankle-high plants, only to get round the corner and find big juicy ones a dozen to a stem on nice tall bushes, which took no time at all to pick. The moral is never start picking till you’ve found worthwhile quantities! The blaeberry is good wayside snacking; they have kept us going all week on walks and cycle rides, here and up at Braemar where we went camping.

Cep (Boletus edulis)

On Monday, Andrew spotted a perfect, un-maggoty, classic Cep (Boletus edulis). They’re called King Boletes on the continent, and they taste magnificent. This one did both of us for breakfast. To finish the week, I’ve just come back from a bike ride. I had no intention of foraging so didn’t take a bag. Instead I ate all the big juicy wild cherries there and then (pig). But when I saw the chanterelles in the wood…. well, did you know you can stuff the sleeves of a cardigan full of fungi, tie it round your waist and get them home in perfect condition? Good timing, I was seriously thinking of buying some mushrooms.