For those that take the time to observe, nature provides the opportunity to harvest food year-round.
As you assimilate with a landscape throughout its changing seasons, the individual plants start to become a part of your life. It takes time to become familiar with them and recognise them at every stage of their cycle. They start showing up on your walks. You learn to identify their leaves, colours, stalks, and you know when they will flower. The most important thing you will learn is when you can harvest them, which parts are edible, when their fruits are ready, when their leaves are the least bitter or their roots have sweetened after a frost.
It takes a full year, if not longer, of visiting the same plants before you can truly become familiar with them and recognise them at any stage of growth, and this is how you will create your own foraging calendar. You will know what areas to visit and what will be there at that moment in time to feed yourself.
The one golden rule to apply above all else is: don’t harvest or eat anything you can’t 100 percent identify.
Sustainable Harvesting
Sustainable harvesting is a destination you reach, it can’t always be determined by rules. Much
