8th August 2019 - Foraging and a barn dance

I was planning on spending this evening at a free ceilidh / barn dance at the fake beach a local business organisation has set up for the summer in Guildhall Square... but after a little while of getting rained on, and there not being enough people for me to have a dance partner, I decided to leave. For once, I would much rather be at home than attending a ceilidh. I felt mean, but there were still 20 good-humoured folks willing to stay and dance in the light rain =] It's a shame, because I love ceilidhs and I'd decided to go to that instead of a talk on sustainable travel and tourism at a sustainable almost-zero-waste café in Winchester, which would have been interesting and useful and where I would have met like-minded people. But oh well. I came back home and wrote this!

In better news, today has been a good one for my recently-begun attempts at foraging. I did some internet research into whether hazelnuts can be picked green and ripened at home - the squirrels always get them all before they turn brown - and was excited to find a blog by a forager right here in Southampton! Not only is the blog extensive and full of information, but the guy has written a book, started a community orchard, and set up an online map where people can pinpoint locations of fruit or nut trees. If you're interested, you can check out the blog at https://theurbaneforager.blogspot.com/

Happily, the answer to my query was that A) you can pick green hazelnuts and ripen them at home, and B) you can actually eat green hazelnuts, before they're fully mature and the lovely brown colour that we're familiar with. Yay! So on my lunchtime walk today I picked a handful of hazelnuts, and an apple (a teeny tiny one), as well as more blackberries.

But, the really exciting moment came when I spotted something I've not seen before (or wouldn't have recognised if I had)...

A WALNUT TREE!!!!!

Cue a gasp and a massive grin :D

Over. The. Moon.

They're green still, but you can only do something with green walnuts quite early on in the season, before the shell starts to harden. So I'll leave them to ripen and hope that the squirrels leave me a few! Meanwhile I'll try to find out some more locations of walnut trees.

I'm so excited to be starting to learn more about foraging and recognise more wild food plants, and am looking forward to harvesting more in the coming weeks and months!