I'm a forager, woodsman, wild foodie, outdoor safety & skills instructor, podcaster. North Wales.
As we head into the summer festival season our fields and forests will bear witness to all sorts of chemically-enhanced social gatherings. It turns out that this nothing new - rural folk have been exploring the fringes of reality for centuries.
Commercial foraging once promised purity, provenance and profit - but behind the wild garlic and sea kale lay a world of muddy legality, food safety headaches, and ecological grey areas. A brief and peculiar chapter in Britain’s food story.
A spring visit to the gold-standard of English grouse moors triggers conversations about pragmatic conservation, why we get everything wrong - and how we can get it right.
One of our most common (and overlooked) trees - hawthorn embodies an ancient mix of sex, death and a warning to all foolish enough to disturb her.
The early River Cottage shows captured a rural life that now feels like a fading dream. As old ways disappear and the countryside is reshaped, what can this cosy slice of 90s television still teach us about a lost rural past?
Wild garlic, or ramsons, is one of the first wild foods to appear each year. Most foragers will make some soups or pesto, but that barely scratches the surface of what this pungent and versatile plant can do - and you can start as early as February.
Rural churches now sit as quiet, lonely relics of a busier countryside, but they were once scenes of raucous action, creating the need for a unique job role - The Dog Whipper.
As winter grips the countryside, those who work the land face relentless challenges—biting winds, economic uncertainty, and mental health battles. Yet their connection to the land fuels resilience.
Truffle hunting is a dark art, with practitioners across Europe carefully guarding their spots against rivals. I went out to hunt wild, Welsh truffles with a professional - and found that there is a long, English history of truffle hunting.
Sloe gin has developed something of a poor reputation over the past few years - both for being too sweet and for some spurious associations with slavery and oppression. Happily all of that can be ignored with some research and careful chemistry.
Around this time of year I try and catch up with friends after a long and busy summer - but how do you survive a dinner party when the host has a history of putting poisonous mushrooms in the stroganoff?
Bilberries are now an overlooked and underappreciated British wild food - but they have a long history of use in everything from dyeing cloth to posh skincare.