In some long-forgotten undergraduate anthropology course, I learned that our primitive ancestors spent no more than twenty hours a week on sustenance activities. The logical extension was, of course, that our forty-hour-plus work ethic was a sort of modern madness. Now that I am older and wiser, I’m not so sure I believe this theory. During my recent camping trip, for example, we tried to do most of our cooking over a fire, and spent a surprising amount of time just starting and maintaining the coals, boiling water, and cooking and cleaning up – and this was with food we’d bought at the local Safeway (except for one trout).
The good life Non-supermarket food in Zone 2
There is, however, something undoubtedly attractive about the idea of our noble savage ancestors living hand-to-mouth in the lap of the land – with plenty of time left over for naps, games, sex and whatever stone-age equivalent of TV and surfing the internet happened to be big in the cave. How close can city-dwellers get to this sort of lifestyle?
Anyone who gardens in subtropical Central London knows that the local snail and slug populations are almost unstoppable. But this just makes any successes that much sweeter. After a few years of trial and error, I’ve worked out that semi-poisonous plants work the best, so it’s the Solanaceae all the way: chili, tomato and potato, and a garden-full of snails with serious gut-ache. The tomatoes and chili have been a bit of a disappointment this year; apparently the UK honeybee population is succumbing to Colony Collapse Disorder, which could explain the poor yields. But the spuds are indestructible, and it’s a wonderful feeling, unearthing these tubers like pale white treasure from the ground and eating them soon afterwards, preferably steamed with a bit of butter, salt and home-grown herbs.
Come the apocalypse, could I feed myself and a family hunting and gathering in Russia Dock Woodlands, the 35-acre green space which runs along the back of our garden? Possibly. One of my favorite books, an SAS manual called Survive Safely Anywhere by John Wiseman, is full of useful tips about living off bugs and rainwater. We’ve got firewood, foxes and squirrels, doves and magpies. We’ve got canals, ponds and the nearby River Thames full of fish and the makings of canard a l’orange — without the orange. I might be able to train the cat to bring in his various rodents and amphibians instead of devouring them outright. There are copious edible nettles and other weeds and fungi, the odd wild apple tree. And of course, a superfluity of blackberries, which I’ve been gathering and eating several times a week during this peak season.
Is there an evolutionary imperative that makes gathering especially attractive for me, as the female of the species? Although I am not brilliant at reading maps that are reversed towards the direction I’m facing, I am extremely good at navigating back home by remembering where I’ve come from. This, yet another university lecturer informed me, must be the heritage of my gathering ancestral sisterhood. And it’s true that I go into a bit of a trance when I’m picking berries: the hot sun on my back, the dreamy buzz of insects, the prick of the thorns, the sticky purple juice on my skin and the way it feels when a ripe fruit falls into my fingers without even a tug on the stem. It’s addictive, the urge to gather just one more berry, and I often have to force myself to stop. But equally, I like the thrill of the chase; I have never hunted anything other than fish, but I think I would quite enjoy it (with something sporting like a spear or arrow, not a gun), and I do chase the foxes when I scare them up on my runs, imaging what it would be like to corner them and go in for the kill.
Is this all in my genes, or just a myth of imagination?
I wonder whether it wouldn’t be easier just to gather the slugs and snails? Chill con slug; Slug au vin; Slughetti – a whole new cuisine beckons.
Oh my God. I hadn’t thought about that, but your logic is impeccable, Frank.
Deep-fried sluggets, anyone?
Here in Cromer the slugs are as big as Winnebagoi.
You probably have more bees, though.
I’ve spotted several dead bees in my garden this year and it has me worried. Although we had decent yields of peas, tomatoes, courgettes, plums and figs, hardly any of the many cucumber and pear flowers have been fertilised and turned into fruit. I think we have about 8 pears maturing on the whole tree – of course 6 of them are on the only branch that hangs over the fence into the neighbour’s garden. Maybe I can hold some of his apples hostage and negotiate an exchange of
prisonersfruit.There are a few pear trees in a little wild orchard in the woodlands, and not a single pear this year – and only a dozen or so apples, which is very unusual. I’ve heard tell from country friends that squash, for example, isn’t getting pollinated at all. But North America is in direr straits than us, so far.
I really should have got a paintbrush like Gregor Mendel and done the business for my charges personally.
I’m starting to wonder if pear trees need something extra that they’re just not getting from us. Hopefully not the paintbrush approach… Our two fig trees, plus the persimmon tree, have produced tons of fruit in the three summers we’ve had the house, but we only got pears in the first summer, when the previous owners had been taking care of the trees until late May.
Some plants are dioecious and need flower-to-flower pollination, so maybe your success stories are those that use wind or other methods, or can self-pollinate. The CCD started in North America two or three years ago, apparently.
Planting is very important, but of course.
Always check the latest weather though.
In America, fruit hanging into your garden legally belongs to you even if the tree doesn’t; maybe it’s the same everywhere? Cath, maybe you need to try to do some creative ‘training’ of the pear branches along your fence — or perhaps a midnight raid? You could employ a small boy.
No idea what the actual law is, but overhanging=ownership in my book. I help myself to my neighbour’s apples (his tree is barely standing up under the weight of this year’s fruit), and encourage him and the other neighbours to do the same with our figs (we have more than we can eat, although I am going to attempt fig/ginger/lemon jam this weekend).
However when a neighbour comes into possession of 75% of my annual harvest, the rules may be subject to change.
I have 6 young nephews to choose from, some of them remarkably adept at this kind of thing (3 of them picked a lock and ended up on the roof of our wedding venue last year while we all partied on, oblivious).
We used to have a summer house in the country when I was a kid and we had a plum tree on our land that was spreading halfway into the neighbor’s yard and we considered the fruit on their side to be theirs. I am not sure if it is a common law or if it is written.
We’ve got a blackberry vine that snakes into our garden from the neighbor’s and, legal or not, I always feel furtive. Note to self: why did I plant that damned gooseberry so close to the fence?
For those of a frugal mind, and with an adventurous taste, I recommend Food for Free by Richard Mabey. I did spend a weekend in Wales using this guide but ended up living on bilberries because we decided trapping and eating the large numbers of sheep we shared the hillside with would be cheating.
What on earth is a bilberry? Sounds like some sort of hobbit.
The SAS manual I mentioned in the post has a fantastic section on edible and medicinal plants. I went through a phase in my twenties when I tried to eat a lot of weeds, but it was tough going. And I once prepared a cold remedy out of Colt’s Feet — it was slimy and disgusting.
I think a bilberry is what you colonials call a blueberry.
Here in Cromer the harvest will be disappointing. We’ve had a few peas and beans, but tomatoes, cucumbers and sweet corn have been a dismal failure.
The only consolation is the cooking-apple tree which is producing a fabulous crop just in time for what looks to be a decent year for blackberries, so I’ll soon be making blackberry and apple jam.
Even if there are enough bees around, it’s better to assist tomato pollination by tapping or shaking the inflorescences from time to time.
Londoners might be interested in the fungal forays organised by Andy Overall, who dubs himself the ‘fungi to be with’. He’ll take you round places like Hampstead Heath and Epping Forest pointing out the edible mushrooms. I interviewed him a few years back.
I once went chanterelle hunting at Mr Rainier with a so-called expert and ended up with one poisonous one in my basket – fortunately discovered just before the stir-fry hit the wok.
Raf, anyone who uses the word ‘inflorescence’ instead of ‘flower’ has got to know what he’s talking about, so I’m taking notes.
Jenny, inflorescences and flowers are different things.
I have a scientist cousin in Cambridgeshire and every autumn we join her and her mycologist mates for a fungus foray. We find more than a hundred species in places which, as a non-expert, you’d be hard-pressed to find more than a few. Going out with the experts is always an eye-opener.
Come to this rather late, but you be pleased to know on the earliest comments that my book The Global Warming Survival Kit includes instructions for preparing slugs and snails for eating.
And going out with myco-laymen is most of the times an eye-closer.
(Rule of thumb number one: don’t eat the ones that have gills)
Brian, remind me never to accept an dinner invitation from you.
Jenny> I remember the “lichen soup” I prepared on one of those “survival weekends” I went through to see if I could survive in Sweden on a weekend with nothing but a knife and flint…. 😉 The sleep deprevation helped make the food taste delish, almost.
In regards to the fire/cooking and time consuming. I learned pretty quickly that the crushal thing of cooking for 50+ people while trying to do it “mediveal style” in the forest was to get up real early in the morning to get a good fire and then trying to direct it towards the kettle/pan.
..and also, I tend to be useless finding me way back if I’ve been a passenger in the car when driving towards something but if I’m the driver I know the way solidly. Would that fall into the ‘kinetic’ memory?
I was going to make the same flower/inflorescence comment as Jenny and will now have to go and Google the latter word.
And Jenny – who’s Mr Rainier?! Does he live near Seattle?
Oh, it’s a group of flowers. Where should I be tapping it, Raf? On the top of the highest flower, or somewhere lower? And do you know anything about pears?
Cath, Mr Rainier is a fellow with a gigantic…region of uplift. As you well know!
Yes, the whole passenger/driver thing is probably linked with what I was referring to above re female gatherers (unless it’s all a load of cobblers). I have a personal theory why our ancestors stopped gathering in mixed gender groups: whenever they got lost, the males got angry if the females wanted to stop at the nearest petrol cave and ask for directions.
Ah, the large craggy fella. I hope your relationship with him is not too rocky.
Someone reminded me today that, come the apocalypse, anything edible and burnable in our woodlands would probably last only a few weeks if everyone were at it.
We’re all doomed.
Given the looming reccesion, you’re onto something. By the way, there’s still fish in the thames? I thought polution would’ve killed them all by now!
Not only are there fish in the Thames (which is much cleaner than it used to be), but I saw baby moorhens today, walking on the duckweed.
Not much eating on one of them, mind. Better off trying to make a salad with the duckweed.
On the Sunday after sciblog I was all set to go on a foraging wander around Regent’s Canal with Fergus Drennan (Fergus the forager) but I completely failed to leave my house. He was running hour long tours as part of some festival going on there.
Bit of a shame that I didn’t make it actually as I’m taking part in this ‘eat the change’ pledge [avoiding plastic packaged food for a week] – not out of any entrenched ideological position more out of ‘enjoying the challenge’ and an excuse to buy 1,000 brown paper bags|| (wholesale) like the ones grocers have – and so is Fergus and I might have picked up some useful tips.
Went on a great bushcraft course earlier in the year with the Woodsmoke crew in Cumbria, highly recommend them. Ponassed fish, carved a little wooden knife, built shelters… got mildly lost (I have zero map reading or route following skills) but I did not get Lyme’s disease which I always consider a plus after getting bitten in tick country.
||and play shops, obviously.
http://www.carrierbagshop.co.uk
Hey Jo – why not get one cloth or string bad than buy 1,000 paper ones?
I’d love to learn how to build a shelter. That SAS book I mentioned also has a chapter on it: the most interesting build has got to be the igloo. What with global warming, though, I’m not sure that’s a priority.
Mind The Gap (TM) would like to apologize for the terrible grammar + typo of the first line of the last comment – I plead caffeine insufficiency.
The End Of The Pier Show(TM) accececepts your apogology.
The bags are for the toast and any lunchtime sandwiches I might bring to work so am fairly keen on paper bags 🙂
Shelter building is great fun! Hard work though.
Reusable tupperware?
Plastic bags are in contention to be the state flower, or perhaps the state aquatic invertebrate. I decided to keep a very small proportion of them out of the waterways, and off the landscape, by turning them into reusable shopping bags:
They work best as produce bags, for the garden or the farmers market, since it’s easy to rinse off any dirt or debris. Each tote consists of “yarn” from 60-80 plastic carrier bags and newspaper wraps.
Wow! You should sell those. They are so cool!