Gathering Values

From left: Hawthorn Berries, roadside apples, Bullrush, cherry tomatoes and blackberries

All of this, except the cherry tomatoes which are from our garden, were picked free from our local roadsides and creek edges. All of it edible or useful. The Hawthorn Berries on the left were used following this poem recipe. The Bullrush, I simply picked and tried. Finding  that it is only the inner stalk that is edible. The rest is quite fibrous.  It has a peppery flavour, and you can certainly taste the siltiness of the creek in it which may not be to everyones taste.  But it can be steamed, used in salads, and with some seasoning, I am sure would be very tasty. Not unlike bamboo shoots. 

 Lets face it, learning to eat and live all over again, particularly when it comes to food that is outside of our sick, convenience and sugar saturated lifestyle, is not an easy task. Preparing these things is very labor intensive. And you might say, (as I did in my mind through out this experiment) well, why bother? Its a lot easier to rip open a packet. Pay for something at the shop. Get it delivered. Thats the mindset we have been absorbing and conditioned to live by for 60 years. Thats a whole generation of people. Yet if you go back, just one, maybe two more generations, this kind of food gathering was alot more common. Out of necessity, people often suplemented the family menu with wild rabbits and other kinds of forage. They kept chickens, grew vegetables, which now is very fashionable again. Knowledge was local, and often handed down. Not just indigenous food knowledge, but the colonisers also learnt from experience about how to make the best of what was at hand, and passed around how to use it.  Baking your own bread, picking wild foods, preserving and pickling,  collecting and storing things for the winter,  the knowledge of which has been all but lost.

home made bread and in the background, slabs of mashed Hawthorn Berry drying.

I realise collecting foods like this, is not going to put and end to buying things from the supermarket. At least, not yet.  As I have said before this  is a start. A beginning. If  we dont  take the time to actually try these things, we wont ever learn what works and what doesnt. 

It was a curious experience, stalking the edge of a creek with a pair of scissors and a plastic shopping bag. People wandered past with their dogs, or jogging, a bit bemused, curious, or downright suspicious of what I was doing. There had been rain over night, and the creek was flowing and the air was  fresh. It is such a different feeling to pick berries off a tree, or dig out a bullrush from the roots, than it was just 15 minutes before, when I was walking the aisles of the local supermarket with a shopping basket.

 The bags of chips, and so many things I noticed for sale there, vying for my attention with bright colours and alluring design have nothing to do with my daily nutrition or well being. Almost everything there, is actually working against that.  Doing its best to consume me. Make me an addict. A slave to consumption. It was only once I took the time to try gathering and preparing some of these other local foods availalbe outside the economic system,  that I realised just how rotten the whole charade is.