Cotswold Foraging

I'm pretty much a Cotswolds boy born and bred (my family moved here before I was two), and although I've spent plenty of time living away - including a year working in Greece - I've ultimately ended up gravitating back here and settling down.

Home for me and my family is a quirky old bright pink house that's slightly too small for us - although with two young boys, two rehomed dogs, and hundreds of cooking and foraging books, plus equally large numbers of jars and bottles filled with preserved foraged items, my girlfriend would say it's just too full…

When I first started out trying to turn this twenty plus year old passion into a job, I thought I could probably only do it by harvesting wild edibles and selling them on to local restaurants, which being the The Cotswolds, are plentiful. But it soon became clear that despite wanting to utilise seasonal wild food, many also wanted Wild Garlic in September, Fresh Sweet Chestnuts in May, and to pay the bare minimum per kilo for products that took hours to harvest sustainably. So I quickly gave that up, in the main, as a bad idea. Although I did meet one fantastic chef, who although not immediately truly understanding the idea, was so excited by some of the new flavours in foraged foods, that we began working together on projects, and hopefully will again in the future.

Nowadays, a lot of my time is spent taking public or private groups out on walks where they learn about foraging, ethically, as a source of food - although much of what I focus on is about using foraged food as a source of flavour, not as a bulk ingredient. I also work with groups on the positive health benefits of just spending time outdoors, as well as with others on re-engaging children with nature, and how foraging is just one way of starting into doing that.