Today I harvested Spruce roots to make baskets. Spruce trees are a Christmas classic. These friendly evergreens crop up in many places. Not only can you eat the fresh green needles, you can use their shallow surface roots for cordage in basketry and bushcraft. Cordage means lashings, rope, string, twine and whatever else you can…

Because why not… Hazel catkins, moss, soil, birch bark shavings. it’s really relaxing and makes you aware of the textures and colours of the season. Try nature art now! I’m aiming at doing some nature response art each month. Who else wants to join in and post their responses to Spring?

Fried up these Oyster mushrooms I found growing on a felled poplar at Tiddenfoot Lake. At the end of January! It just goes to show that you can find tasty edible mushrooms year-round. I got our mycologist, Phil, to check over my ‘catch of the day’. Oyster Mushrooms are a tender bracket fungus that comes…

Here’s some pics of my Birch Bark Basketry workshop. Some beautiful baskets were made! Thanks to all who came and to Heni at the Good Life Refill for hosting. We used traditional Adirondack Native American designs to etch into the surface of our baskets. It was great to find out what everyone else was doing,…

Today I thought I’d go out and collect several different wild tinders. Tinders are plant materials and fungi that you can use to catch sparks (ie from a strike flint or bow drill) and start a fire. (If you are surviving an apocalypse and have forgotten your lighter!) They are nothing to do with the…

Fellow Foragers will be with me when I say we are coming out the other side of the harshest month for foraging. There’s a few edibles out there for the beady eyed to find, however! Green under the ice One of these tasty reliable salads is Chickweed (Stellaria media). This little plant has historically been…

For those of us lucky enough to have wood or multi-fuel stoves, we can lessen the impact of fuel prices by collecting our own wood! SEASON IT WELL! If wood is seasoned it will be lighter in weight and colour. It will likely be cracked at the ends. This is all good – it means…

Yep, sweet chestnuts, most of us have heard of them, or eaten them roasted from brasiers in large cities in November. Castanea sativa…meaning ‘sweet’, this useful tree was brought over here by homesick Romans. Little did they realise how the rainy, cold climate of Blighty would affect the quality of the nuts! Yet the chestnut…

Want to learn the art of foraging your own food from the wild? Come on these half day courses with expert forager Kathryn Clover (me) as seen on the BBC and featured in Bushcraft & Survival Skills Magazine, Kitchen Garden Magazine, Waterways World and Backwoods Home. We’ll be going on a 2 hour foraging route…

I’ve been having great fun this autumn and winter. Squirrelling away wild seeds and nuts, then in some cases soaking them in 2 changes of water a day for weeks on end. I then put my small child to work grinding up the dried results in a coffee grinder expressly not meant for the purpose.…