16 April
I took my ‘push me/pull me’ hedge-laying tool, which resembles an exaggerated boat hook, down to the pond. I pulled out another five sweet chestnut logs and stacked them in the shade nearby. The logs I pulled out four days ago already have tiny mushrooms beginning to form. I am going to keep up this pattern of shocking a few more every two days and see what volumes I produce. I enjoy walking amongst my log piles. To a visitor they would look like any other pile of firewood, but I know there are mushrooms stored in the log, waiting for me to free them. Today, with so many piled up at different stages, I felt like I was wandering through an outdoor laboratory, inspecting different stages of an experiment. Took 2 kg to the Hollist Arms – Sam is going to stuff them with walnuts and Stilton, and serve them as a starter.
I often think that, as a species, the human race is under high levels of stress. Our reaction to this stress, similar to the mushrooms, is to reproduce, and in doing so we maintain the seemingly unstoppable upward curve of our increasing population. I once heard on the radio that had China not adopted its one-child policy, over the past 25 years their population would have increased by the size of the population of Europe (and that’s not counting all the children who were born). With our rapidly growing population, and the associated challenges of meeting our energy and food needs, it is possible with hindsight to see the wisdom in what at first glance seems such a Draconian measure. It probably seems a step too far for Western cultures to consider such a measure. But sooner rather than later we are going to have to make some major decisions about population control – unless nature, through natural disasters or contagious diseases, decides to make them for us. I find this one of the most difficult environmental questions of all – and as a father of three children, I understand the animalistic need and drive to procreate. In the United Kingdom as a whole, and especially in the south-east of England, we are very heavily populated. It is hard to see how we can maintain population growth at its present rate, whilst at the same time converting more potentially food-producing land into accommodation and harvesting more resources for energy and infrastructure, without further degrading our landscape and pushing more species towards extinction. However, despite this rather negative outlook, it is important to remember that a new generation always brings fresh hope. Perhaps it is the children of the next generation who will make these tough decisions about population growth, limit our energy usage rather than expand it, develop local food and energy initiatives to revitalise communities, and simplify our lives to bring us more in touch with nature and our natural environment.
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Foraging has become a natural part of any walk I take and I am always alert to a free meal that nature is offering. Crossing some of the many rural roads near Prickly Nut Wood, one becomes aware of one of the few benefits of the motor car to the forager. Motor cars are quite adept at producing a meal and I’ve collected a good number of pheasants and rabbits, one partridge, one mallard duck and a number of roe deer, all of which have provided fine meals. The quality of roadkill varies depending upon the nature of the vehicle’s impact and where it has struck the animal. Whilst I have picked up pheasants so crushed and flattened that it would not have been worth trying to sort the meat from the bone, I have found others where the impact has been slight and the meat is untarnished. The next thing to establish is how long the animal has been dead. First check for warmth and how flexible the body is – has rigor mortis set in? Then look for flies’ eggs, which can arrive within an hour in the heat of summer. Have any hatched in to maggots? Does the meat smell? If I decide it is good to eat, I still have to get the meat back home. This is easy with a rabbit or a pheasant, but not so easy with a roe deer. If it is a deer I find, the first thing I look for is to see whether the stomach has begun to swell. Deer are ruminants and the grass in their stomachs will ferment, making the stomach inflate with gas. If the stomach is not swollen I will ‘paunch’ the deer – cut open its belly, and remove the stomach and intestines. If the deer is still warm, at this stage I will remove the liver and take it back home for my next meal. I will then drag the deer into the shade, marking the spot clearly in my mind so I can return to it later with a vehicle and collect the carcass. Once I have the carcass back home, I hang it in a fly-free environment for a few days before skinning and butchering it. A roadkill deer will provide venison for a number of meals, and such a find often signals a good time to invite over friends for a fine casserole or roast. The actual killing of deer is controlled under the Deer Act, so don’t let the delicious taste of venison tempt you into hunting deer, unless you decide to get properly trained through a deer-stalking course with the associated firearms certificates.
Heading north on the return journey to Prickly Nut Wood, the footpath takes me under an old walnut tree that kindly deposits large volumes of nuts upon the footpath. The actual walnut we are all familiar with is enclosed within an outer case that is thick and green. The green colouring will soon stain your fingers when harvesting these nuts. It has been traditionally used as a dye, as have the leaves. After picking a bagful of nuts and husks and then trying to wash your hands of the greeny/brown colouring, you will certainly appreciate its qualities for dyeing. I have five mature walnut trees I visit for foraging nuts as I walk around the parish, and there are a couple I have planted at Prickly Nut Wood. I planted grafted varieties of ‘Broadview’ and ‘Buccaneer’, which have struggled to compete with the ever-present challenge of the grey squirrel. I visited Martin Crawford’s nut trials at the agro-forestry research trust in South Devon and saw some fine examples of grafted walnuts producing well, which are all very suitable for our climate here. Martin recommended the variety ‘Fernette’ in particular, but there are a number of good cultivars to choose from. Away from the woods, where squirrels have less aerial access to trees, the planting of more walnuts would be a useful addition to our future food supply. In any garden or wasteland space, the planting of fruit- or nut-producing trees will help us towards having more established perennial food production, something that I believe will become a necessity in the future.
