Foraging in '23 and beyond...

Rosa_Damascena

thriftwizard said:

Yay! Loads of crabapples... I've brought back half a carrier bag to get us off to a good start, but there are tons left on the two trees. I couldn't resist gathering another bag of sloes, too. There was lots of beech mast lying about, but most of the little nuts were skinny & empty - worrying...

What I dislike about fruit trees is the wastage!! I'd be looking to pick every last one 

A cherry picker apparently costs £30ph to hire - is that cost effective? 

Katiehound

goldfinches said:

@Katiehound - ha ha! If I'd said you had to try a large glassful while soaking in a hot bath with violins playing in the background you'd never have believed me.
 

Well, you just chose the wrong music as it needs to be the slow movement of Mozart's clarinet concerto.
Bath: no, can't get out!! I would however have believed the large glassful

the sieved liquid is just cooling now and smells good. Bottle it  this afternoon with possibly 250 ml vodka! needs to be boozy.

sadly no sloes or crab apples round here.
Blackberries diminishing
 I even saw someone taking branches to the tip hanging with apples. You are not allowed   to ask anyone for whatever they are about to dump. Have to go up there with eyes squeezed tight: so much waste.

Goat_Face

Hi all,

The OH and myself are big into foraging, we have a wood not far and there is always something. Last weekend we came back with blackberries, mushrooms and wild mint.

There's a random apple tree on the bridleway going there, so I nicked a couple of low hanging ones.

Mushroom pasta dish and blackberry and apple crumble was dinner that night.

Laurasiamos

Went out foraging as planned today. Could only get about 5 dewberries which the kids quickly gobbled up. Managed to get a box of blackberries though. Also got a small bag of apples and some sloes. Really happy as the apples and sloes were a new find for me having only seen them whilst we have been on holiday before. Nice to know there's a local patch I can return to year on year. 

Then my neighbour came over with a bag of apples from her tree, a box of blackberries she had picked and some runner beans from her garden. Definitely a good free food day! 

Newbie_John

I only just pick random items during walks and eat as snack like rose hips etc.

Anyone tried The Great British sea weeds:
https://www.wildfoodie.co.uk/post/edible-seaweed-types-uk#:~:text=Is all Seaweed Edible?,can be made using seaweed.

Apparently they're all edible 😎

Matty246

Probably a silly question but do you have to sterilise the bottles and if so what's the best thing to use? I made elderflower champagne one year and it was lovely. Made the next year and had to throw it down the sink. Gutted! 
 

Katiehound

Always sterilise bottles, jars and lids.
 The problem is that there are mould spores in the atmosphere that can affect your brew/ cordial/ jam etc

You can sterilise in the oven- I think someone has explained on an earlier post

Apparently you can sterilise in a microwave:
'Wash jars and rinse them before standing them upright in your microwave and microwaving them on full power for 60 seconds. Lids can be sterilising by submerging them in a pan of boiling water for 10 minutes. Use both straight away.'

I do mine in boiling water, they sit in a bucket of boiling/very hot water for about 10 minutes and then I bottle the liquid straight from the saucepan. In this instance thinking of elderflower cordial.

You could always use a winemakers sterilising solution- 

What is sterilising solution for brewing?

For Sterilising, use 1 tsp Sodium Metabisulphite (or 10 crushed campden tablets) to 1 pint of water. Stir to dissolve, then use the solution, to coat all surfaces with the liquid, which you then leave for 10 minutes. Items do not have to be submersed in the liquid, but the surfaces must be wetted by the solution.

I feel sure I used something else which was easy to make - but it's not showing on google!

pretty sure you can use citric acid to sterilise the bottles.

MoonChild91

Just to add to Katie's post above, I always sterilise my jars in the microwave for jams and chutneys following the same method, and have never had a problem! I leave them in there until I'm about to pour so they stay in a clean environment and soak the lids in boiling water at the same time. Just make sure you use a (clean!) towel or dish cloth to handle them as they do retain a lot of the heat from staying sat in the microwave. 

Admittedly I never keep my jams or chutneys for a long time before opening, but I've never had any issues with mould doing it this way. I only ever make a couple of jars at a time so i find this way a lot less fuss than using the oven. 

Katiehound

Chutneys should keep for quite a good while because they contain vinegar.

I use a silicone 'grabber' when holding my jars, then lift them onto a wooden board. Don't advise a kitchen worksurface as that can damage the jars or be damaged itself!

thriftwizard

Rosa_Damascena said:

What I dislike about fruit trees is the wastage!! I'd be looking to pick every last one 

A cherry picker apparently costs £30ph to hire - is that cost effective? 

Well, £30 is a lot more than our telescopic-arm apple-picker cost from L!dls many years ago. It's basically just a long pole with a fabric pocket at the top, surrounded by a set of metal claws, kind of like a vicious-looking shrimping net! You hook the claws round the top of an apple & it falls into the fabric pocket. (I have replaced said pocket several times now.) Which is great for the big apples in the garden, but I wouldn't take it up to where the crab apple trees are, about 1½ miles from the car park, down a narrow, muddy & overgrown path where I'd be sure to get it stuck in something. No way you'd get anything with a motor down there! And those are not small garden trees, but undomesticated 50' ones; enough crab apples for all the inhabitants of our small-but-growing town (if they were interested) with plenty left over for the wild things.

That's one of the things I always used to mention, back when I was teaching small groups about foraging; always leave enough for other people too, and anything you can't easily reach is for the wild things. We can go to the supermarket & buy stuff; birds, squirrels, dormice, insects etc. don't have that option, and in a bad winter, they need all the sustenance they can get. I do take a stick when I'm out for blackberries, elderberries & sloes, but it's mostly to bend brambles away from my legs, and to balance with. 

@Newbie_John, interested! Long ago, back in the 70s, in my teens I lived by the sea and we did have late-night parties on the beach, eating line-caught mackerel fried on biscuit-tin lids over driftwood fires, playing guitars & harmonicas (very badly) all evening, then trying to sleep in pathetically-thin sleeping bags on shingle, which, let me tell you, is NOT at all comfortable! (But watching the stars wheeling overhead is awesome.) Seaweed did feature in some of our ad-hoc suppers, and IIRC was tasty, if very chewy. I'd love to find out more! Have eaten & enjoyed laver bread, and I do use nori in cooking quite often, and I'm always gathering seaweed at the beach to use on my allotment. Off to investigate your link...