Picknik #1

Today at noon we met on Southampton Little Common, for the first of our Urbane Forager “Pickniks”.

Let's Get Picking!

We had around 10 people turn up, including friends, children and some folk from the Transition Network. A fairly large branch had been broken off the tree by inconsiderate pickers beforehand, so we knew we had to be careful.

The Apples Soon Start Building Up

The big apple tree was loaded with fat, rosy fruit high up in the canopy but all the lower ones had been taken. Fortunately we were well equipped with apple pickers and some great children, who could climb like monkeys.

Someone Call Monkey World

The weather held out, despite reports of heavy rain, so we started collecting the lovely big apples. After a good load of fruit had accumulated, we had a short break for our picnic but the kids were soon gagging to get back up the tree.

More Challenging Than a Climbing Frame

Everyone filled their bags and baskets and I filled my builder’s buckets with 45Kgs of the best ones I could get my paws on, some of them were huge. We should have enough to store plenty and still have some left for cider making.

Nice Picker Action

As we left, other people were arriving to pick more fruit and there was plenty still left on the tree.

It's a Hand Picked Whopper

Word of the Urbane Forager must be spreading because a woman came up to me as we were leaving and asked where she might find Sloes and Blackberries on the common. I pointed out that it was still a tad early yet for sloes but blackberries can be found all over the place.

Look, No Hands

Traditionally, you pick sloes (to make Sloe Gin amongst other things) after the first frost, so lots of time to hunt them down. However, if you really can’t wait, you can cheat, by picking them early and sticking them through the freezer...

Sorted!

Looking Forward To Picknik #2 Next Weekend

Fruity Fascism



Cherry Blossom Gives Way To Daisies

I recently received an interesting comment from a foraging friend in South Africa, this spurred me into thought about the nature of the native, or aboriginal arboreality (perhaps).

“…Sadly here in SA we don't have fruit-trees, vines etc. in public places unlike the UK and all orchards are protected by razor wire or gun-shot! You live in a different world to me. Just about the only trees on roads etc. are oaks = acorns, not sure what you can do with them. They are on a witch hunt to get rid of all alien vegetation too, so have cut down beautiful old trees. You must realise most properties here are behind high security walls. Even parks are not safe to walk in alone. People get robbed hiking on the mountains etc...”

I know that we are very lucky in UK to live in such green and pleasant surroundings. Lots of my favourites, like cherries are native trees, and as a result, they are literally all over the place. Unfortunately for the safety and peace of foragers this does occasionally mean, beside the busy roads that criss-cross our allegedly tranquil landscape.

April Showers

But what really constitutes a native tree?

Apple trees and orchards are a part of English heritage but they were actually introduced by the Romans! Before that we only had crab apples, and I don’t know how that would have inspired Newton, or indeed changed the legend of William Tell. Yet, if someone were to suggest that we ought to get rid of all our alien apple trees, I would be most upset and consider it an act of arboreal Apartheid (no offence intended to my S. African friends) or Fruiticide perhaps.

(British) Bluebells - Lurking, Suspiciously - Somewhere Near You

On the other hand, I am all for reintroducing species that have been hunted into extinction. I think a few wild boar, wolves and bears would make a picnic more interesting and a walk in the woods or camping far more exciting!

This Spring I have heard a lot about the veritable armada of Spanish Bluebells, which are apparently invading our countryside – they are described as less delicate and less pretty than our native ones, other than they are not quite as good in some vaguely brutish way...

(Spanish) White Bluebells Coming over Here, Stealing Our Woods?

In the end, I think that invasive or alien species, as they are termed, are generally no more harmful than slang or txt language. It annoys the pedants, but that is never a bad thing.  Nature, as with language, is in a constant state of flux and change, things do get naturalised. It is fruitless to try to control nature; even gardens need ramshackle areas, left to be wild.

What Time Is It? Springtime!

If you really want a very flat, sterile, bland, moss and mole free lawn with no variation, weeds, animals or anomalies – then go and play golf, but I don’t think that is natural either.

My sister pointed me to this link about recent scientific proof that my theories are correct (I always suspected as much) a month or two after my writing this post...

Science Daily Birds Fruit and Foreign species

Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White

Today was another day not to be stuck in the office, so I made the most of my short sleeved shirt and camera during my lunch break.

I have been waiting for one of the cherry trees just outside to bloom fully, mainly because it looks pink and frilly, and I had the Modern Romance song, stuck firmly in my head.  I shot it in bright sunlight against the backdrop of an Industrial building. I’m not a great photographer but this jumped out when I got it home.

Wow, I feel like a pro!

It looked equally stunning against the bright blue sky.

None to shabby either.

I was hoping to find some apple blossom peeping through; I wanted to photograph some for a section on tree identification on the Urbane Forager website and had noticed the tiny pink buds last week. It was a fairly long walk but I figured I could make the round trip in the hour, even given a few dalliances.

Pink and Closed

I was not to be disappointed.

White When Open

I even located a gigantic new apple tree that I had never noticed before, next to a cherry (see Perez Prado / Mack David lyric below). Both were covered in full white blossom.

Blooming Heck!

While I was taking a close up of a flower, I spotted (ho ho) a tiny ladybird running in and out; I managed to photograph him eventually.

Almost too good to be true

On the walk back to work I noticed that the perfume of cherry trees actually does smell a bit like the fruit tastes. I also shot another frilly (but this time white) cherry, which looked rather nice illuminated from the back by the sun.

White and Frilly

Then sadly it was back to the grindstone.

Now though it is Friday evening, I am alone with a glass of red wine and the prospect of a sunny weekend reclines languidly ahead...

Lyric...

It's cherry pink and apple blossom white
When your true lover comes your way
It's cherry pink and apple blossom white
The poets say

The story goes that once a cherry tree
Beside an apple tree did grow
And there a boy once met his bride to be
Long long ago

The boy looked into her eyes, it was a sight to enthrall
The breezes joined in their sighs, the blossoms started to fall
And as they gently carressed, the lovers looked up to find
The branches of the two trees were intertwined

And that is why the poets always write
If there's a new moon bright above
It's cherry pink and apple blossom white
When you're in love

Cherry Pusher

The following year (2010), I decided to make more of an effort to find and process the mounds of available fruit. I was astonished that people were driving over this source of delicious fresh fruit with their cars in the rush to get to the supermarket to pay a fortune for somthing less fresh and less tasty. The funny thing was that some other people seemed surprised and even offended by my actions. When at work one day I popped out of the front door and picked a pile of delicious juicy cherries from the tree there. While I was washing them, someone I work with passed by and I offered them some. The reaction was next to horror. The conversation went like this…


"Hi would you like some freshly picked cherries?"
"Did you just pick them, just now?"
"Yes, just there, outside the front door."
"I’m not eating them, they might be poisonous, are you trying to kill me!"


Astonished, I ventured to ask another staff member.


"They are cherries, and lovely ones too, go on try one!"
"But a dog might have peed on them!"
"How would a dog get up a cherry tree?"
"Oh, they come off trees do they? Well I’m still not touching them!"


I was as shocked that they did not know that cherries came off trees as I was by the enmity I was shown for having the cheek to eat something picked off a tree. It all seemed very odd to me but actually strengthened my resolve.


The next day I was in the, largely empty B&Q Depo car park, there I found a ridiculous amount of cherry trees, I was questioned by an employee who was tidying up but no other issues arose until I came back to work laden with goodies. Again I was quizzed about my motives and, didn’t I feel embarrassed doing it in a car park? Well. I can think of a lot more embarrasing things, to be doing in a car park than picking bunches of cherries.


Fortunately, both of my children enjoy picking fruit, and eating it too. We began going on short local trips with our home made fruit pickers and suitable containers. We began with cherries because it was that time of year we got so many that we could not eat them all. We had to learn about preserving! Fortunately my partner wanted to make jam – again, children like to help with cooking and like eating things they have cooked themselves. I found that you could dry cherries into giant current-like things, by leaving them on a tray in the car when it was sunny. They tasted delicious and kept for longer, you can also freeze them. It turns out that most fruit can be dried in a similar way.


We drove our car to the community centre, not because we were lazy but it was a tall tree and I needed something to stand on to access the higher fruit. I was soon raking kilograms of tasty fruit off the tree and passing it down to my children to store in their containers. After a few minutes, a couple of inquisitive, feral children sauntered by and piped up.


“Hey Mister, what are you picking?”
“Cherries!”
“Are you kidding us? We thought they were poisonous berries!”
“Nope, lovely ripe cherries, here, try some…”


After scoffing the said fruit, the children quickly recruited a small but resolute army of waifs and strays and the tree was soon swarming with them. Fortunately, I had already hoarded much of the goodies due to my early intervention and vastly superior equipment, but climbing trees and throwing sticks is good exercise for young kids. I’m fairly sure none of them were actually seriously injured on the spiked iron railings below.


I had a similar incident with a cherry tree next to a railway level crossing. First of all a woman came out of the flats to confront me - I was using their car park to access the tree, which was behind a fence and actually on railway land - but walking down railway tracks with small children has to be heartily discouraged. The woman suggested that I should pay her £10.00 for the fruit (that wasn’t hers and that she had clearly never picked herself). I laughed at her “joke” as we marched off fully laden again. The next day, I noticed (with a surge of pride that brought a small lump to my throat), a small gang of children scaling the battlements and branches. I felt like a positive male role model and I had clearly been a noble influence on the local youth. I’m sure none of these children died of train related deaths either.


It might be worth remembering these tales if you wish to keep all the local fruit to yourself. You will need to concoct some kind of fakery for any curious folk or inquisitive children. Something along the lines of...


“This fruit is highly poisonous and anyone consuming it will die a ghastly and painful death. We have been sent by the council to remove the toxic items in order to prevent further death and hospitalisations.” should do the trick nicely.

It All Depends How You Look

I am considered a grown up now, and I have two young children myself. I am keen to get then familiar with the world outside and all the wonders of nature and her perpetual cycles of birth, growth, death and rejuvenation. I want to educate them about wildlife, trees and plants – not computers and mobile phones, these things will change with time. Hopefully nature will not. Personally, I cannot imagine a more healthy, vital and wholesome activity for a family than climbing a tree in order to pick and eat fresh wild fruit.

I work on a computer in my current job and I make a point of getting out of the office every lunchtime for a walk or jog through pleasant woods and fields nearby. While habitually doing this, I began to notice the passing of the seasons more closely and took note of which trees blossomed in the spring. I then began to identify some of these trees as plums or damsens (always first to bloom in spring), cherries and apple trees. They were effectively wild trees or on public/common ground.



Do you see traffic or proto-plums?



Once I became able to identify these trees I started to spot them wherever I went. It all depends how you look. It’s a bit like, when a friend gets a new car or bike, you know what it looks like and you keep an eye out for them on the road. Suddenly you begin to see similar vehicles all over the place, it soon becomes hard to believe that you hadn’t noticed how many there were on the road before – they seem to be everywhere. As you might expect, it’s exactly the same with trees, only the opportunity to benefit from this new found skill is going to be far more fruitful, than car identification.

Once I tuned in to these trees, I started to notice apple trees in the car parks, in hedgerows, in housing estates and in recreation grounds, it’s even easier when they have fruit on them or on the ground under them. I spotted cherries surrounding the B & Q car park and all along the main road into town, beside the railway track and in the community centre grounds and even outside the building in the industrial estate where I worked. Naturally, if you identify the blossoms, when they first arrive in spring and note their locations down (this is easy with modern mapping technology) you will be the first one ready when the fruit ripens.

Do you see the cars or the Cheries that will be here in June?

Cherry trees are considered ornamental due to their florid blossom that shows shortly after the plums herald the onset of spring. Consequently, they are often planted along avenues and by roadsides I have also found them used in and around car parks. People though seem to overlook the fact that they are cherry trees and that this is where cherries come from. The same thing is true for apple and pear trees, which blossom slightly later.



Do you see industry or Cherry trees?

Orchards and apple trees enjoy a rich heritage in our cultural history. Almost everyone eats apples, or so it seems, and there are a myriad of different types. Interestingly if you plant an apple pip and it grows, a completely new and random type of apple tree will result and the fruit will taste quite different from its parent tree. The only way to propagate as same type of tree/fruit is to graft a branch onto new rootstock, but that’s all getting a bit unnecessarily technical. Instead of preserving familiar types of tree, you could always try to create your own new type – although it may taste horrible or even bear no fruit, at least it is original.

Can you see Cherry trees and Hazle stands or just a dog walker?

My wife spotted a pear tree on waste ground near the children’s school and picked a few that were easily in reach. Then she noticed several apple trees in the local swimming pool car park. We drove to the pool with some friends and picked a veritable hoard by standing on the roof of our car, then throwing them into picnic blankets held out by our enthusiastic children. They were delicious rosy red apples with pinkish flesh! We named them Flemming Park Reds after the leisure centre. I also began collecting fruit during my lunch hour, initially just eating a couple of plums and bringing some home for the family. Then I started finding apples, which my son and I tend to eat every day.

Never Rob Another Man’s Rhubarb

Like most people, my first experience of foraging (other than in the garden) was picking wild blackberries in the garden or during trips to the countryside.

As a youngster, I was a keen tree climber and I enjoyed scrambling up trees to pick fruit. This was as true for trees in our garden, as it was for those in other people’s properties, although you naturally had to be more careful if you were trespassing.

Scrumping, as it used to be known (stealing and eating apples off someone else’s trees), was something of a rite of passage for many young children. It was generally seen as mischievous as opposed to a seriously crime although one could expect a clip round the ear if you were foolish enough to get caught.

As kids we used to delight in sneaking through other people’s properties unseen, or exploring as we used to call it. Naturally, during our intrepid expeditions we would occasionally need to stop and try some of the local produce (borrowed from our unwitting neighbour’s vegetable plots) en route, in order to stave off potential starvation and as a healthy precaution against things like scurvy.

Personally, I blame Peter Rabbit.

Bring Back Scrumping! (My Early Foraging Forays)

As a young boy I was lucky, in that my parents had a large garden containing apple trees and a pear and plum tree too, along with a profusion of propagated raspberries, blackcurrants and other fruit bushes. My dear Grandma was a keen gardener, and she tended the vegetable plot and flower borders with vigour that bellied her age. She taught my siblings and I plenty about nature and the local wildlife, including what you could and should not eat.

Every autumn we would be out in the garden picking and wrapping apples for winter storage and my mum was forever baking, pickling, jam making and generally cooking things from the garden. I tend to have wistful memories of these idyllic times but these wholesome habits were born largely out of necessity. The memories of wartime and post war rationing were still fairly fresh in senior people’s minds and although it was hardly a siege mentality – it still made good sense to save what you could by eating from the land.

In the Fifties the populace was given the washing machine and TV along with science fiction dreams of robots doing all our housework and flying to work on jet packs. Then the Sixties (when I was born) gave us Hippies, pop music and fashion, the Seventies gave us strikes, the three day week, powercuts, Punk Rock and Maggie Thatcher, the Eighties gave us New Romantic’s Ska, Boom and Bust and supermarkets the Nineties gave us Britpop, mobile phones and out of town shopping centres the Naughties gave us the digital world, globalisation and the internet shopping. Here concludes you history lesson kids.

Throughout all of this time house prices in the UK have pretty much consistently risen, with the exception of a couple of notable falls, and I believe that this has a lot to do with the current miasma that society has got itself into. When I was a young boy, there was a butcher a baker, a greengrocer, a fish shop, a hardware store, a post office, a chemist and a newsagent all within walking distance of pretty much everyone’s house. The groceries would be bought after walking the kids to school, and carried or cycled back in manageable amounts of stout paper bags.

Sadly, because house prices have risen so high, in comparison with earnings, it is now fairly uncommon to have a family where only one person goes out to work and the other stays at home to do important jobs like look after our elderly parents and babies, walk children to and from school, do food shopping and cook meals etc. It also means that families often find it hard to manage without two cars.

The main solution that has been suggested by the powers that be is this… That once a week we all get into our cars, drive to the out of town shopping centre, troop like lemmings into the supermarket and queue up in these soulless super-sheds in order to spend what remains of our hard earned money on vast amounts of factory packaged, plastic coated, precooked tosh! This is called convenience; and bless our tiny little helpless souls we have fallen for the Supermarket mantra as one. If we don’t have time to actually go shopping, we can always order the delivery online of course which might save on petrol and congestion but probably will actually take up just as much time. But I digress.

I’m also beginning to rant, so I shall calmly continue to explain how I became the Urbane Forager...