Else where there is a discussion about cockles & winkles, which started me thinking. How many here like their free food, straight from the wild?
By food for free I am talking Richard Mabey type food. Something from the wild that is foraged for & which just needs picking / taking. So no cartridges etc.
As a kid, I grew up in a farming village close to the coast.
From the beach & marsh I gained. Samphire, cockles, crabs, razor clams & lugworm to make beach fishing free.
From the countryside we collected mushrooms, blackberries, dandelion leaves chestnuts, walnuts & I used to go rabbiting at harvest time, walking beside the combine with a stick, waiting for rabbits to run for cover.
Mainy years ago when I was a telephone linesman in Western NSW we used to be out for days or even a week at a time and in those days always carried a rifle to shoot something for dinner. Mostly rabbit but occasionally razorbacks or small kangaroos/wallabies (it was legal to shoot them then). Once shot a fox but it smelt disgusting while cooking and was basically inedible.
These days if I am one the beach I always stand in the edge of the sea and wiggle my feet to find Pippies in the sand to take home a feed. I think there is a bag limit of 50 but I rarely take more than 20.
Someone told me that while you can use them for bait it is actually illegal to take them home to eat because of algae blooms but I don’t know if that is true
Apart from that these days I find the supermarket more convenient, though if my son in law shoots a deer on his parent’s property I am always first in line for a bit of venison.
I don’t like cockles or muscles, but the horses field had a brilliant crop of mushrooms every year & boy were they tasty, nothing like the forced type you get in supermarkets.
Your list reminded me of my childhood and teens, my old man was a wine maker and my brother and I had to go on these long expeditions collecting so many things on your list that it was not funny. All to make wine.
The funny thing is I dislike wine so for me it was a day spoilt.
When my brother and I left home the old bastard used to go to Ashford market and buy fruit for his wine there.
When he died we took over 300 bottles of wine to the dump.
