Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Is foraging legal?
As the interest in wild food grows, is it actually legal to 'scrump'?
BBC News Magazine explains the ins and outs here
BBC News Magazine explains the ins and outs here
Replies to This Discussion
-
Permalink Reply by james walsh on
-
Should we really be so precious about Swan poaching ?
Visitors from eastern Europe (&others) cannot understand why the English do NOT forage.
They see our fruit rotting on the branch they see us growing flowers instead of food and especially puzzling, we throw the fish back after catching it. When i lived on the river lee canal in tottenham in 2002-2005 i witnessed whole families carrying several kilos of fruit home from the trees growing by the canal and i thought 'yes they're right'. I learned a few things about foraging from them like hunting for the plant Borage on tottenham marshes and using Lyme tree leaves in spring (when they are reddish) instead of vine leaves as a wrap.
Not so impressive was when folk light a fire on the footpath after catching a fish and cook it there and then. I also got upset when the swans started to disappear in large numbers. (although i'm not sure i should)
-
Permalink Reply by John McMullan on
-
I haven't seen any poor starving Albanians in court for Swan poaching. Who's being precious?
-
-
John Mc. I haven't either.
The british traditionally hold swans as sacrosanct. They are not game birds so cannot be hunted.The Queen has a prerogative over all swans in England and Wales. Swans in England and Wales are therefore precious (and i think also in NZ).
-
Permalink Reply by Dick Harris on
-
In my day we used the term scrumping to denote taking apples etc from inside someonelse's garden and we thought of it as involving trespass. These days we routinely collect fruit along hedgerows where access is permitted, eg along country lanes, public footpaths, on commons and village greens. We didn't call it foraging but it seems quite a good word for it (except for the possible implication that it is emulating animals - which don't observe property rights etc) . I have never heard anyone object or suggest that it is stealing. Even where the fruit is hanging over from a tree growing inside a garden, I have few qualms about collecting it. Last year, in Suffolk, I gathered a lot of sloes, blackberries and mirabelles. This year, in Harringay I have collected blackberries along the New River and along the Woodland walk and, no, I have no objection to people collecting the Bramleys that fall from my tree onto the New River path.
I would say that in our free country asking whether it is legal is the wrong question. Everything is legal if it hasn't been banned. I would suggest, gather what you find in public places and see whether anyone objects.
-
-
I suspect I have at least nine years' of illegal blackberrying (commercial) cases pending against me from the late 1940s/mid-1950s. Many's the pair of strong winter boots I paid for from the same illegal racket. Fortunately the Crossmaglen Constabulary (RUC/PSNI) had other matters to preoccupy them between 1957 and 2003 approx. But even as I write could some new Sergeant, with a name to make for himself, be reopening my file (Illicit Blackberry Gang membership / School Mitching 1947 - ). An unforeseen NI Peace Dividend ?
-
-
I used to make some spare cash from foraging for sloes for Plymouth Gin (not scumping/ nicking from gardens, though as kids we weren't averse to that or mitchin' school).
On a recent foray to Hampstead Heath to photograph fungi I was miffed to find that several people (non specific European) had arrived earlier and had bags full of fly agaric (red cap, white spots, loved by fairies). I love to see these and as they are deemed to be poisonous it seemed pointless to pick them, so I tackled them. The pickers were expert at recognising fungi and were able to tell me which trees the different mushrooms favour (and helped me find good specimens to photograph). They were well aware of sustainability and assured me that they only pick mature mushrooms and take care to pick them from half way up the stem leaving the bowl and mycelium (sort of roots) intact, they then tap each cap gently over the ground so that spores are sown for next year. They said that they par boil the 'poisonous' mushrooms in salted water before cooking to draw out the poison and that they are very tasty, however I still wouldn't be comfortable doing this myself. They were astonished to find that many people here destroy them and asked an interesting question, when and why
did people in the UK lose the knowledge and confidence to forage for fungi for themselves.
-
Permalink Reply by Liz on
-
I'm speculating but basing it on something my mother-in- law once said and my meeting with the wartime cooks at Markfield Park, but I think foraging was very common and indeed essential until the end of rationing. However, in the post rationing, cheaper food world of the last 40 years, the skills of our grandparents were not passed on. My ma-in-law wouldn't eat rabbit as it reminded her of eating it in the war and seemed to associate collecting food with that time too. Yet, during the war people collected all the wild fruit including stuff we tend to ignore like crab-apples to supplement their rations (and although there was the danger from bombs, people were pretty healthy as a result of this diet). In the 60s, wild food became associated with hippy and alternative lifestyles in the English speaking world at least. In most of Europe, wild food collecting continued. I've been fungi collecting in France with families and some of the weird and scary stuff they collected and ate I'd have been scared to pick without their advice.
Local groups like Urban Harvest and Sustainable Haringey are trying to collect and spread this knowledge wider again, including reminding us of very old fruits like that of the true service tree I blogged about recently.
OAE, I hope my Nan's selling of her various foraged food jams at local women's guild dos won't cause her to get a criminal record.
-
Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
-
By coincidence.
This photo by James Peachey (posted with his permission) shows two women we met briefly on a walk across Tottenham Marshes. (Original here.) They'd collected wild plants for food and told us one of the plants was "like spinach".
The walk, incidentally, was to photograph the openness of the Marshes and beauty of the River Lee. Comparing this with the tower-blocks going up in the so-called Hale Village at Tottenham Hale.
-
-
Alan that's exactly where they forage for borage (sorry for rhyme) http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/16/Borago_officinal...
-
Permalink Reply by Maddy on
-
I worked in a bookshop when I was at school in the 70s and there was a book called "Food for Free" by Richard Mabey that was very popular. I've just checked and it's still available on Amazon.
-
Permalink Reply by Gregg H on
-
Very interesting discussion here... good to see people taking advantage of nature and not letting it rot.
I'd like to learn this and be confident about what I'm doing. How do you get involved with Sustainable Haringey and Urban Harvest?
-
-
Hello Gregg,
To get regular updates from Sustainable Haringey and associated groups, you can sign up for their newsletters on their website
The network will have an Autumn Gathering on November 7th at Tottenham Chances. Details here. Go along they are a friendly bunch as I found out when I attended their Summer Gathering
© 2024 Created by Hugh.
Powered by
