Spring…bring on the adventure of Wild Food Foraging…nature’s food!

The first day of Spring has officially arrived (here in the southern hemisphere at least). I’ve been enjoying (and only slightly impatiently) watching the plants in my garden, and while out walking the dog, start to grow and come back to life over the last month so I can get back into foraging some wild greens.

I have enjoyed foraging for wild greens for over 10 years. It’s something that I actively became interested in when I studied Organic Horticulture and visited a wonderful permaculture property on one of our field trips. As we wandered around the rural property and looked at the various areas of cultivated vegetables living among the ‘weeds’ it was an Aha moment for me that we don’t need to rely just on growing the vegetables that we want to eat. That a lot of other vegetables, aka edible weeds or wild greens, grow out there on their own and bring the same nutritional value or same sort of quality to a meal and take NO effort to grow and come with NO cost. So why not start using them? At the time, my home was on a decent size of land in suburbia in an old, established part of town, which brought with it old trees, hedges, and craggy areas left to run wild . This very overgrown backyard became my learning ground in the early days of plant identification and gave me the ability to harvest various wild greens to try them out as food.

This then led on to every bush walk or beach walk becoming one with a secondary focus on foraging!

Over the years, this desire to forage and find fresh food has stayed with me, even though the pace of life has changed and it’s not as easy to forage on a day to day basis when I no longer have an overgrown jungle of a backyard and I’m out of the house from 7am until 5pm. But now, even with the rest of life there needing my attention, it’s something that has become important to me to bring back into my daily living in some way whether it is actually foraging or maybe finding a new recipe or a new plant to locate when I next get out there. This all fits with my desire to live life better and more mindfully and sometimes it’s just baby steps and putting in as much time as I have - even if it’s just once a week I’m winning.

I was intrigued during my travels to Italy during Spring that in a restaurant in Porto Venere, which is a bit more regional, that there was an item called “wild herbs” on the menu. Our Italian guide explained that this was common in restaurants and that the items were gathered through foraging…I saw this for myself the next day as we walked the Cinque Terre walkway with the abundance of wild edible greens out there on the cliff sides among the olive groves and grape vines. It was in Italy where the Slow Food Movement was founded, and this was certainly noticeable in particular in the smaller regional towns with easily accessible wild greens in the surrounding countryside forming a core part of this philosophy.

How do I use my wild greens?

Some of my favourite ways to use greens simply and without any effort is to add a handful of wild weeds where I might otherwise use spinach or other leafy greens to a meal such as a bolognaise sauce, a crock pot meal, an omelet, frittata, salad, or a green smoothie.

What are my top 7 wild greens for food?

1. Chickweed
2. Dandelion
3. Plantain
4. Sheep sorrel
5. Clover
6. Nettles
7. Wood sorrel

Dos

• It’s really important to clearly identify your plant! If you’re not sure, err on the side of caution and don’t eat it.
• It is great to take a walk with someone who knows about harvesting wild greens. Sometimes I see advertised on Facebook an event to take a group foraging walk. I did one of these in my early days and it was hugely helpful and it’s lovely to meet up with other like minded people.
• Find a good field guide on edible greens - there are some great authoritative books out there with really clear photos and descriptions for identification.
• Your own backyard is a great learning ground – check along fence lines, or edges of your house or garden sheds or below trees and shrubs. There are some very easily identifiable greens that you can usually find anywhere such as chickweed, clover, plantain and dandelion (although you will need to learn about the dandelion impostors even if they are not harmful). 
• Some weeds that have runner roots can easily have a piece broken off and replanted at home if you want to cultivate your own (sweet violet, nasturtium, and red clover are ones I have successfully done this with).

Don’ts

• The main rule is: Don’t take too much of what you find. You want to ensure that you don’t wipe out the whole plant or create an imbalance in the environment around it (and you want to have a place to come back to another time!)
• Only harvest from healthy looking plants.
• Avoid areas that are possibly contaminated – my favourite dog walking area probably isn’t the best place to forage so I don’t as there are not only lots of other dogs most likely using the plants to pee or poop on, but it is set down lower from the main road and housing and therefore a likely place for pesticides or stormwater run off to contaminate the plants.

Pick a plant today and add it to your meal tonight!

Choosing to live my dream life...steps to finding my way there!

Today I am living my dream life. It might appear to be an ordinary day on the outside that started off in the same way as every other work day. But on the inside, I am feeling that this IS my dream life.

This morning, as I sat in my favourite sitting room at home with my work laptop positioned on the couch beside me and a hot cup of tea cradled in my hands I felt inspired to write about it, to capture the moment(s) and have something to remind me of this dream life I am already living. To be reminded that it’s not unattainable, or something for another day, or for when I’ve finished this or that, or when the sun is shining. As I sat there with my cup of tea warming my cold fingers I gazed out at the rain gently falling on this chilly end-of-winter’s day and listened to the raindrops on the roof and it felt perfect.

I had woken as usual with my alarm at 6.25am even though I was going to be working from home that day. Upon waking I decided that today I was going to live my dream life…the good life…do all those lovely things that I think about and want to do, yearn for, but don’t have time for, AND still get my work done! My image of a dream life is not one that is necessarily busy and full of amazing and new things or packed with fun and excitement by buzzing from one activity to another, but one that lives in the deepest part of my soul – one which is also amazing and full and exciting. It was going to be one that included all my seemingly ordinary activities such as getting children ready for school, getting ready for my day, or tidying the kitchen.

What was going to enhance this day and make it so much better was to go about it with more intention and using my time wisely and mindfully and moving seamlessly from one moment to another. I knew I was going to include some meditation and yoga to get my mind calm and my body loosened up. I knew it would include writing a few pages of stream of consciousness to process thoughts and clear my mind for the day to come. I would then start into my work. While time may be a concern (and often is enough for me to stall and not do the things I really want to do) and while I my preference might be to spend 30 minutes doing yoga, a further 45 minutes doing a meditation before taking 20 minutes to write a few pages of words, what I acknowledged and accepted easily was that I did have limited time – but that was no reason to not do all those things – I just needed to take a different approach. So, I spent 15 minutes doing a combined yoga and mind clearing meditation followed by 20 minutes of writing my few pages of stream of consciousness. I then started my work just after 8.30am.

What is also noticeable about my dream life is the awareness of the way I go about daily routines. Routine can be useful and we all have them, but they can also be done on autopilot with your mind elsewhere, distracted, just processing and doing life. Day in and day out. Mindfully approaching my routines on the other hand with a sense of ritual speak to me on an emotional level where I am fully engaged and are done with a sense of purpose that is meaningful and done mindfully. I am living in the Now. It is like an extension of meditation in that I am actively focused on what I am intentionally doing. I am tuned in to what I am doing in the moment whether it is cleaning the bathroom, wiping down the kitchen bench, making a cup of tea, talking to the dog or saying goodbye to my children for the day. My attention is focused on the activities as I carry them out, not just ‘tick, one more thing completed, Next!’. 

It is about choice. Choosing to embrace the slow, mindful pace of life while still doing the things that needed to be done rather than focusing on the busyness and losing myself in it.

As I now write this at the end of my day I note how liberating it was to be fully immersed and experiencing each moment. Taking the time to feel it and allow that feeling to be etched into my inner being. A gentle reminder that this is attainable every day no matter what my situation is. It is also attainable when I am based in my office at work…I can still maintain this peaceful mindset while doing my train commute, the walking to work in the wind and rain, the sitting at my desk working my way through a multitude of emails with an approach of mindfulness and peace.

A few points that I find good to remember...

• What things do I put off doing due to lack of time or because I'm not living in the right house, or the weather isn't ideal, or I don't have a room to set up for an activity, or I have children needing my attention or no partner to do it with? Can I do one of  those things in a modified way to make it happen today?
• Can I give myself a reminder to get my head back into the Now...bring my attention back to what I am doing and empty the distractions from my mind so I am fully focused and embracing the feeling to existing in this current moment?
• Am I rushing through my routines when I could turn my attention to them where I begin to enjoy them and they become a ritual associated with this good, mindful life.

How do you embrace your everyday life in a way that allows you to live your dream life? Will you make time to do something off your dream list and turn your day into a good day too?