Foraging for Free Food: How to Hunt Out a Hedgerow Harvest

, written by gb flag

Foraging for berries

One of the joys of late summer and early fall is walking or cycling along hedgerows and woodland edges, hunting for the abundant free food on offer – sweet-tart brambles, fat rosehips, huge clusters of glistening rowan berries, purple-black sloes, and more. Fruits from some of the most common species of trees and shrubs can be easily processed into autumnal delights such as jams, jellies, pies or even a cheeky tipple.

You don’t need much equipment to start foraging – a harvesting basket, box, or bag, a pair of gloves to protect your hands from thorns and nettles, and a good plant identification book are all useful.

Rowan and Elderberries

Rowan trees (also known as mountain ash) bear small, vivid red fruits in clusters, which makes them easy to spot from a distance. Rowans are tolerant of quite poor soil conditions and can often be found in dry, rocky places – it’s not unknown to find them growing in the walls or roofs of ruined buildings or even, believe it or not, in the branches of other trees!

Rowan berries

Rowan berries are most often made into a jelly, paired with crab apples for pectin, but they can also be used to flavor liqueurs and schnapps. Harvest them when they’re fully red and ripe, but before they begin to soften. They’re quite tart raw, but cooking and adding sugar tames the flavor.

Elder is perhaps more famous for the wine and cordial made from its frothy flowers, but its berries can also be made into wine, added whole to apple pies, or turned into tasty elderberry jelly. They’re ready to pick when the berries are black, plump and beginning to droop.

For both rowan and elder, the easiest way to harvest and prepare is to remove the whole cluster by snipping the stem, then at home wash the berries and strip them from the stalks with a fork.

Blackberries and elderberries

Blackberries

Blackberries, or brambles, are rampant spreaders, which is good news for the hungry forager. The secret to the blackberry’s success lies in its ability to propagate itself by tip layering – the spiny stems arch and root where the tip touches the ground, and in this way they can ‘walk’ for quite some distance.

If you’ve ever gone brambling you’ll know that the flavor can vary considerably from bush to bush, with some being very sweet and others more tart. They ripen over a long period too, so fruits from the same bush will also be in different stages of sweetness, with those at the tips being the earliest to ripen.

Blackberries

Blackberries can be cooked in pies or made into delicious bramble jelly, but I confess that I enjoy them best fresh as a welcome energy boost when out walking.

Haws and Sloes

Hawthorn and blackthorn are the villains of the hedgerow – armed to the teeth with thorns that are ready to prick the thumb or poke out the eye of a careless forager. Hawthorn fruits (haws) are bright red and not unlike rowan berries, but the leaves of the trees are distinctive – the hawthorn’s are small and wavy-edged, as opposed to rowan’s slender, oval leaflets. Haws should be harvested when slightly soft. The native British species (Crataegus monogyna) isn’t great raw unfortunately, being quite thin-fleshed and dry-tasting, but they do make good hawthorn jelly. Be careful not to eat the stones, as they can cause stomach upsets.

Hawthorn berries, also knows as haws

Despite being the ancestor of all cultivated plums, the fruit of the blackthorn is much too astringent to eat raw. Blackthorn fruits, known as sloes, can be used for preserves or in wine-making, but the most common usage is for flavoring gin. Sloes are best picked when softened or ‘bletted’ after the first frost, but popping them in the freezer overnight will have the same effect. Mix them with half their weight in sugar, add some cheap gin and let them steep for two or three months, shaking regularly until the sugar has dissolved. Your sloe gin should be ready in time for Christmas, and the gin-infused berries can be recycled into sloe gin chocolates.

Making sloe gin

Rosehips

All varieties of rose, wild and cultivated, are edible (although you will need to refrain from deadheading your garden roses if you want to enjoy the hips). Wild roses can often be found climbing through hedges, and the outer flesh can be eaten raw – you need to be careful to avoid biting into the hairy seed and pith however, as it is an internal irritant.

Rosehips

Making jelly or syrup are the easiest ways to process rosehips as the seeds are strained out. During World War II, people in the UK were encouraged to harvest wild rosehips due to their extremely high vitamin C content, and children were often given a spoonful of rosehip syrup a day to boost good health. You can also make rosehip wine or herbal tea.

When food is free it’s tempting to harvest everything in sight, but remember that wildlife too needs these nourishing fruits, so be sure to only take what you need and spread your harvest over several plants.

Of course all of these trees and shrubs can also be grown in the home garden if you have space– while you will miss out on the thrill of the hunt, for the time-pressed forager having fresh ingredients for jam or fruit pies right there in the garden is undeniably handy!

By Ann Marie Hendry.

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Comments

 
"Great article! Thank you, from British Columbia, Canada! All of these are readily available here as well. Going to go out and pick some rosehips now. "
Esther on Friday 5 September 2014
"Mom always said: -"Dont pick them until after the first frost". Dont know why or if it true but I love Rosehip soup, warm or cold."
Tom on Friday 4 September 2015
"I have been foraging and making elberberry and blackberry jam for the past 3yrs! It's amazing and the best part is I only pay for the jam sugar. Great for Christmas presents."
Trisha on Friday 4 September 2015
"Tom, rosehips can be picked any time when ripe, but they do become sweeter after a frost so your mom is quite right! "
Ann Marie Hendry on Tuesday 15 September 2015
"I am from the Uk and we love foraging for berries here :)"
Jacqueline on Saturday 20 August 2016
"How can I know when rosehips are ripe?"
Teah Petersen on Friday 18 November 2016
"Rosehips will be a bright orange or red when they're ripe. Squeeze them to be doubly sure - they should be quite firm and only just starting to soften (not going wrinkly). They often remain ripe on the bush for quite a long time. Have fun foraging!"
Ann Marie Hendry on Saturday 19 November 2016
"Lots of inspiration here, thank you! Is it the case with everything that's best after a frost that putting it in the freezer works just as well? PS Your sloe gin chocolates link is broken - it goes to a payday loans site!"
Sarita on Monday 12 September 2022
"Absolutely Sarita, freezing your sloes simulates a frost so you can do that instead if frosts are late - just make sure the sloes are properly ripe first. Thanks for pointing out the broken link - we've fixed that now."
Ann Marie Hendry on Wednesday 14 September 2022

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