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.…

Personally , I’ve munched on snails, bark, crayfish, roadkill and fermented nettles…. But I draw the line at these chocolate raisins from the pound shop. What would you not eat, even in a dire emergency? Cat food? Car radiator water? What have you managed to keep down? Special recognition for the strongest stomach…. Over to…

Here’s a pic of some delicious Stump Puffballs (Lycoperdum pyriforme) I found off the wood path in Tring Park. There were lots more, but as Marty won’t eat them it was better not to be greedy. yep, they are in one of my birch bark baskets…great for keeping mushrooms fresh and not squashed… Puffballs are…

Excellent post on birch bark basketry…I’m not quite at this standard yet!!