Hunter-gathering

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Hunter-gather for sloes and other offerings from the fields and hedgerows

By Country Queries of The Field

Monday, 30 March 2009

Having retired last summer I have impressed my wife with my skills at hunter-gathering. The freezer is respectably full of pheasants and the odd brace of partridges, plus a large quantity of blackberries. I also managed to find enough sloes to make my first brew of sloe gin. To continue in this vein can you recommend a book that advises on hunter-gathering through the seasons?

An enormous number of books have been written on this subject, but there does not appear to be just one publication that encompasses the whole theme. However, there are some useful titles. Food from the Wild by Ian Burrows guides you through 250 species including fruit, nuts and seeds, and offers information on their habitat, occurence and how to prepare, use and cook them. It also lists ways of preserving and storing foods that are available only for short periods of time.

Food for Free, written by naturalist Richard Mabey, was first published in 1972 and has been reprinted several times. This popular book lists many wild foods, has interesting recipes for wild flowers, good advice on picking rules and has the bonus of both intricate drawings and photographs for identification purposes.

Wild Food: Foraging for Food in the Wild, by Jane Eastoe, covers nuts, seeds, flowers and plant leaves and also includes fungi, seafood and road kill. All these books are available from good bookstores and, armed with these titles, one should be able to hunter-gather effectively throughout the year.

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