Tasty treats on the forest floor
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nyone that’s seen Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall diving into hedgerows or Ray Mears rummaging for a forest-floor snack may by intrigued by the weird world of wild food.
Step up Fergus the Forager, a man on a mission to entertain and educate about the tasty treats to be found on your doorstop.
Over half of what Fergus Drennan eats is wild food which means he’s got a good idea as to what’s hot and what’s rot in nature’s bountiful larder. Not everyone can knock-up a winter salad out of Navelwort, hoary cress, and opposite-leaved golden saxifrage or make plant stems like Bristly ox-tongue and Hogweed edible.
Throughout the year, Fergus takes small groups on a twelve hour foraging course across woodland, field, river, and seashore habitats around Canterbury and the surrounding coast.
The self-titled wild man will tell you just where to find ingredients, how to harvest them sustainably and then cook them. In the spring, you might tap a native birch for its syrupy sap or warm your cockles in the winter with a spicy sea buckthorn and carrot soup.
Fergus is bursting with enthusiasm, driven by the desire to show people another way to eat which doesn’t rely on mass-produced foods as well as unlocking the healing potential of wild food.
The day comes to an end with a three course meal of foraged food cooked on an open fire and washed down with a glass of Dandelion and Gorse wine - now that is what we call wild.