Foraging in Brighton and London

Last week I went visiting friends in Brighton, after 4 months away it felt great to be back. So far I've not been anywhere that feels more like home than Sussex does for me which is an interesting realisation. Maybe one of the outcomes of this journey will be I feel it's definately the right place for me to put down roots and I'm very open to that possibility. Whilst staying with my friend in Shoreham-by-sea we went foraging along the river Adur and harvested lots of juicy blackberries, elderberries, sloes, rosehips and some delicious apples from a tree amongst the blackthorns. Although we couldn't survive on this it is very empowering to be able to identify edible plants and make your own healthy organic produce with it. The plastic packaged food from the supermarket starts to look even more unappealing. A couple of days later I was staying with some other friends in Brighton who also like a good forage and on our way to the Firle fair we found more sloes, blackberries, elderberries and damsons. I've been thinking for a while now it would be great to make a map of where the best places for foraging are but not share it with everyone though for obvious reasons.

Drying rosehips for tea

Home produce
Back in London where I'm staying for a bit before my Findhorn trip I'm drying out the rosehips in the airing cupboard to make rosehip tea, I didn't have enough to make syrup but would like to try that next time. Having made sloe gin last year I thought it would be good to try sloe vodka (partly because it's a variation on a theme but mainly because vodka was in my parents drinks cabinet!) They have an apple tree in their garden that produced a bumper crop this year so after my mum made apple cheese, similar to the quince jelly (membrillo) the spanish eat with manchego cheese, we dug out the juicer and made some delicious fresh apple juice with the rest.

Kimchi and sloe vodka in progress

I also made some kimchi to use up the store of veg box cabbages that can start over running the fridge if you get them every week. Kimchi is a very popular pickle in Korea made from cabbage, carrots and radishes with a spicy mix of garlic, chilli pepper, ginger and onion that is not only delicious but has health benefits as it promotes healthy tummy bacteria. As it's now september and there are still lots of green tomatoes on the plants in my parents garden I also had a go at the method of ripening which involves putting them in a draw with either a ripe banana or apples that give off ethylene, a gas that ripens fruit and so far this seems to be working. Otherwise it will be time to make some green tomato chutney!

Green tomatoes ripening with apples in the drawer

Eat weeds
Whilst searching for foraging recipes I found this website with some alternative recipes to the usual ones you find http://www.eatweeds.co.uk/. It serves as a reminder that the plants most of us have come to know as 'weeds' can be made into tasty, nutritious organic meals and with more information coming to light about the health problems associated with food produced by industrial agriculture and the rise in food prices we really don't need much more encouragement to learn about how to benefit from this free food. All you need is the knowledge and adventurous taste buds to get you started!

Connecting with nature spirits

It’s been a while since my last post and in between then and now I went to the Bhakti chanting festival that I really enjoyed and have discovered chanting as another form of sound meditation. Then went back to Gaunts house to volunteer at the summer gathering to re-connect with my new friends and also met lots of other interesting folk. In between working in the information tent dealing with stressed workshop leaders and parents who’d lost their children I was able to attend a few workshops. Highlights for me where connecting with nature spirits, which I will be experiencing more of up at Findhorn in a couple of weeks time, healing relationships using inner child work and understanding dreams for spiritual intelligence. It was great to spend time and share experiences with like-minded souls who are on their own journeys.

Strawberry vinegar and other delights

But before all this happened I had another wwoofing placement at Harpsbridge House, a permaculture smallholding a few miles from Mablethorpe on the Lincolnshire coast where I learnt lots of top permaculture tips.  My hosts Nick and Sara Vowles have been living a sustainable lifestyle there for about 10 years guided by pemaculture ethics and principles. The hard work they’ve put into their home and way of life was reflected in their fantastically productive smallholding and their community work. It was great to spend time with people who have been doing it a lot longer than me and to hear about the ups and downs of their learning journey.  They were also very understanding when I had my tiredness meltdown (see previous post) and had to leave a bit earlier than I planned but despite that I had a great time there and really appreciated the warm welcome I received especially after my Old Hall experience.

It was a shame I was so tired because it’s only now on reflection that I see how much I learnt and how much effort Nick and Sara put into making their helpers stay such a positive experience. There was bread (chilli and coriander seed was the best), cheese and fruit vinegar making, jamming both eating the fruit kind and making music, interesting conversations about sustainability, helping out on a school community garden, bush craft skills, plant identification walks at the nearby nature reserve and I even got an opportunity to teach the permaculture design process for a PDC course Nicks been running this year for some local secondary school teachers who want to teach permaculture to their pupils, an important priority for the next generation.

Teaching the permaculture design process to secondary school teachers 

Experimenting is good 

The most inspiring aspect of my time in the garden was seeing Nick’s experimental approach to growing, a fan of polycultures rather than companion planting his philosophy is to work with nature as much as possible so if nature in her wisdom decides to grow a plant in the middle of a designed bed it will be left there unless it’s getting in the way of his intention. I really liked his experimental approach of just trying things out rather than worrying too much if it will work as even if it doesn’t you will learn a lot during the process. Triage weeding was another example of low maintenance gardening and is possible with a well mulched plot as you can be selective about removing plants that are in competition with the ones you desire to grow. Just choosing to pull out weeds that are about to go to seed ensures you don’t get loads more growing in a place you’d rather they weren’t in residence rather than the Gaunts House approach of five hours hoeing beds to remove all weeds, what a waste of people energy! There were many examples of the design principles and features in action including a shelterbelt around the plot to block the prevailing wind, an apple orchard with geese, a herb bed watered using ‘grey water’, polycultures, stacking, a wormery, water capture and pumping, chickens, geese, bees, mushroom growing, scything, rocket stove cooking and seed saving to name a few. Other things that spring to mind where leaving the cabbage roots in the ground so you can have cut and come again cabbage leaves, using grass as a mulch, the huge variety of delicious jams, pickles, chutneys and vinegars (including the aforementioned strawberry flavoured one) you can make with your produce, using wilted comfrey to feed slugs so they don’t attack your plants, planting phacelia under your blackcurrants to provide bee food and stop birds eating your currants. Most evenings we walked to the nature reserve,  a wild unspoilt coastline very similar to the north Norfolk coast I’ve visited many times but here it was even less inhabited apart from the grey seals that like to bob about close to the shore for us to wave at.

'Cut and come again' cabbage

Grass mulching the polytunnel

Singing to the seals

On my last visit to the beach for some reason I started singing to the seals, they didn’t sing back but one of them did hang around for quite a while and I felt like we shared a moment together before I walked back up the beach and he swam off into the depths of the vast ocean probably to tell his family about the strange warbling two legged creature it had seen on the beach that day… thanks to the Vowles family for a great time.

A beautiful 'sand tree forest' on the beach, the intelligence of nature is awe inspiring