Spring Foraging Challenge

Hello my friends and welcome to another video with me, Steve England Outdoor Learning. I'm here at Stoke Park in Bristol and I have a challenge on my hands where I need to go out onto the land and find my own food. I'm going to be looking at hedgerows, grassland and woodlands. The only thing I can take with me, I've got a bit of bread in my backpack, some garlic butter and some dry cured Spanish ham. All the rest of my food I've got to find for myself. Will I do it? Well join me on a journey and let's find out. Well I've come out into this environment now where I am into this grassland and I've got all these multiple environments and the challenge is I don't know what I'm going to find out here. So I really have to do my homework but I have seen something interesting that's caught my eye and it's behind me. So I'm in this area here where somebody has cut all the brambles down and you get all the new shoots coming up and all the new shoots of brambles are edible and good. They have a very nutty flavour to them and I can see all the shoots coming up here like these here. Look at that. There you go and that there is edible and good and that is definitely one for my basket. Look at that already. I don't need to walk far to find my food. I can see some plants in here which are really interesting. I can see two plants here. I can see wild lemon but I can also spot a toxic lookalike as well. This is where I've got to be really careful now and I have to slow myself down and not get too excited. I've got to make sure I do my identification check because if I get it wrong I am in big trouble. So here you go I've got two leaves here in the grassland environment and this is what you've got to watch out for. I've got this one here and this one here and they both have arrow-shaped leaves. So this one here is the edible common sorrel. This one here is the poisonous arum lily, lords and ladies. If I ate any part of this plant this would nail me with nausea, vomiting, sickness and diarrhea and I don't want that. So I have to make sure that I slow down and tune in, do my identification checks thoroughly. Okay so that's two edibles that I've got so far. I've got my bramble shoots and I've got my wild lemon which is common sorrel. I want to go and see what else I can find in the grassland environment. Follow me. What have we got here then? Look at this. What I've got here are oxeye daisies. All daisies are edible but these guys are your wild cucumber. Definitely one for my basket. Okay so I've got three edibles so far so let's go and see what else we can find. Rough grassland areas like I'm in now is always a good place to stop and have a look and right away I can see two potentials. First of all by my feet I've got these. This is ribwort plantain and the seed heads are edible and they taste of mushrooms. So they are going in my basket definitely next to it. Have a look at this. You see what I've got there? Look at that. Wild onions. Definitely one for my basket and what's really important as well is that I stay within the law because it is illegal to dig plants up by their bulbs. So I just snap them off and I can cut and come again. So now I've come into a different environment. I'm in a woodland environment now with a lot more shade and there's not as many edible plants in here but what I have spotted on the way in is this here. This is ground elder. The way I identify ground elder is the leaves have three sets of three. Three, three and three and these are edible and good. What I want are the new shoots. You see the difference in the colour. So this one's going to be more papery and this one more succulent. These are the ones that I want. What I'm after now is this plant here. Wild garlic. One leaf at a time and what I want are a few of the nice unopened flower buds as well because they're really tasty. They can go in as well. Always makes me happy being in an English woodland in spring, picking wild garlic, listening to the birds, the bluebells are just emerging, the smell of garlic. Such a mood lifter. So I've collected all my food that I need out from the fields and in the woodlands. Now I need to source myself a fresh drink and there's one particular tree that's going to do it for me. This one here. This is a silver birch tree. So how do I know it's a silver birch? Well the silver birch tree is the only tree that has white bark and you can see the white bark on this tree so that tells me it's a suitable candidate to get a drink. All I need to do is cut a little stick like that and I always bring with me my little cup that I've got, my bamboo cup. So whenever I'm out and about and I want a drink I just use the trees. Okay so how I'm going to extract the sap from this tree is I'm just going to get my knife, I place my cup on a stone and I'm just going to gently tap my knife into the tree and then all I'm going to do is get my stick and just gently push it in to where I've made that cut mark and what happens is in a minute once that water in the tree soaks through the wood it'll start dripping into my cup and already you can see where the sap is soaked through the stick and with fingers crossed in a couple of hours I should have a cup full of drink. Well it's been a couple of hours now since I put my cup down. I've come back to see how it's getting on. Oh well hello look at this I got a drink look at that it's full to the top of birch sap that is incredible that is sweet and it tastes like coconut water that is amazing and that's how you source fresh water from trees, silver birch, cheers. Well that's me drink sorted out now let's go and prepare our meal. Let me just quickly go through some of the things that I've got here. So over this side I've brought with me some Himalayan salt, a little bit of cracked black peppers, a little bit of lemon juice, my mess tin, some nice Italian dry cured ham, my birch sap which we collected from the birch tree earlier, some wild garlic butter that I made from this woodland and in my basket I've got all my forage goodies from today. So I'm going to start off here by slicing off some of my nice dry cured Italian ham. So the meat is optional you don't have to have meat you know a forage meal is equally as nice. I'm going to chop that up look at that there we go so that's my ham done that goes in. So I made the garlic butter by using the garlic paste from the leaves that I collected I just blended it to a paste and I've just buttered some onto some nice bread. I'm just going to chop those up like so and I'm going to put them to one side for a moment and then I'll come back to them in a minute and then I get all my vegetables and all I'm just going to do is grab a handful of what I've collected and I'm just going to run a knife through it like so. I'm just going to chop up make a nice finely chopped salad like so. So I've got all my mixed salad leaves they're going in the pot and with my bramble stems I'm just going to peel them you have to peel them so with my knife I'm just going to run my knife down the stems get all that string off and I'm just going to chop them up literally just chop them up and then into my salad they go. I'm just going to mix it up like I'm going to chuck a little bit of lemon juice in there a little bit of cracked black pepper and a little bit of Himalayan sea salt. I'm just going to roll it in like that and then I'm just going to get my garlic bread and then I'm just going to literally stick them on top of my bread with some ham like so. Now it's nice to put a garnish of the odd primrose flower on there or something like that as a garnish. So there's my my meal guys so I've got my birch sap which we extracted from the birch tree and I've got my food which I made from from today's foraging and there you go happy spring. So there you go guys mission completed we've been in multiple environments and we found our food hedgerows grasslands and woodlands and what's really important is when you do go foraging is that you do it sustainably, safely, learn your poisonous plants and if you're not sure don't try and eat them. I've got my birch sap and I've got my meal I've got a nice little fire going. Happy days. Wow all the flavours. Well there you go guys I hope you've enjoyed this program demonstrating the abundance of free wild foods in these environments go safely, go foraging safely, sustainably, stay within the law and if you're not sure what you're picking is edible leave it alone, walk away from it, it's not worth it. Cheers.