ON THE TRAIL OF THE 'DITCH WITCH'
That’s the rather uncouth term for a female forager but as this one explains, it’s a very civilised pursuit that brings nutritional, medicinal and beautifying rewards
IT’S a freezing January day and as he drops me off in the car park of a supermarket next to a pub in urban south Dublin, my taxi driver is puzzled as to my quest.
‘Foraging?’ he says incredulously. ‘For a few pints?’ Indeed it must look odd, given the relatively urban location but I’m here to meet Feebee Foran, self-confessed ‘ditch witch’ who has made nature her business.
For where most of us see untidy weeds and straggly plants, Feebee, 43, sees lotions and potions, cures and garnishes, salads and treats. The Firhouse woman spends her days along the Dodder river seeking out roots and shoots to make her bestselling skin products for her brand Forager.ie. She appears once a month on Ireland AM to spread the word about the value of what you could be throwing on your compost heap.
‘Do you see that scraggly stuff under the electricity pylon there?’ Feebee asks, pointing at a bit of scrub. ‘That’s heaps upon heaps of chickweed growing. It looks like a carpeted mess of green but it is really good to treat eczema and psoriasis. It’s a totally edible plant — in the early 1900s if you had been walking down Moore Street or Meath Street where the vegetable vendors were, they would have sold that in punnets.
‘It’s really rich in vitamins and was a very cheap way of getting vitamins and greens into people. It tastes a bit like corn on the cob.’
You can mash it up with a bit of aloe vera gel or a squeeze from your own plant if you have one and create a potion that will soothe eczema, psoriasis, contact dermatitis, bites and stings.
‘It’s growing all over the place but to an untrained eye it might just look like a big old mess. Part of my mission is to show people what these plants are as they are the most sustainable resources we have. No matter how many times you pull them out of the ground, they grow back.’
Dressed in a designer puffa jacket and pink boiler suit, Feebee is pretty much a local celebrity, who’s greeted by the regular walkers and allotment owners as we dander down the nearby Dodder path.
Members of the local men’s shed stop to inquire when she might be back to give one of her talks as she hokes hedge mustard away from a wall to put in her basket.
It’s hard to believe that just a few years ago Feebee was a marketer for a slimming company, something that sounds like a sharp-suited, businessminded pursuit. So what changed?
‘I was always a nature girl at heart, it was something that my parents instilled in us as kids,’ she says. ‘We would have been given books on animals and nature. My dad was a great outdoors man and he would have been out fishing and come home
WEEDS HAVE TO HAVE A PURPOSE, THEY CAN’T JUST BE GROWING FOR THE SAKE OF IT
with stories of stoats and weasels and things that he saw. To me that was a magical world.’
As she grew older, the typical teenage pursuits got in the way, then college and a different life path. But Feebee came crashing down to earth when her father died in 2018.
‘My dad died after an 11-day illness with cancer,’ she says. ‘He went very, very quickly. I suppose with most people who go through a loss very quickly like that, you have to adapt.
‘I went into what I could best describe as a deep freeze — that feeling where your body allows you to get through your day, go to work, do your bits, go to the shop but after a while that deep freeze kind of thaws out and then you need to get a handle on things because you are feeling your feelings.
‘I realised very quickly that I needed something to ground me because all of these emotions were coming in very fast. The thing that called me to ground me was the ground itself. There’s beauty in that saying and the reason that something grounds you is that you are called back to the earth again.’
Feebee had an allotment and six months after her father died, she found herself there, digging holes.
‘I was just digging, digging, digging,’ she says. ‘I needed to connect with something and see change because my life was very stagnant as I was so focused on my grief.
‘I really took solace in the fact that if I put seeds in the ground I could really see them grow — even if I felt I wasn’t growing, I could see growth. And I felt, okay, things might not feel normal now but Mother Nature seems to know what’s coming next so if I put my trust in her I can grow through it.’
It was as she was planting that she discovered that no matter how many weeds she removed, they always came back.
‘This led me to a whole journey of discovering what they were, as I thought they had to have a purpose and couldn’t just be growing for the sake of it,’ she says.
Feebee started to study what each plant was and found information on their properties that ignited a passion for herbalism and how plants can have medicinal properties to help with various ailments.
By the time the first lockdown came around, when others were making banana bread, Feebee was making little daisy balms in her shed and leaving them on her friends’ doorsteps. Word spread about what she was doing, to the point where people were approaching her in the supermarket, asking if there was something she could do for migraines or psoriasis.
‘It grew legs,’ she says. ‘I started doing farmers’ markets and now my
YOU CAN LIVE TEN LIFETIMES AND STILL NOT KNOW ENOUGH ABOUT PLANTS AND NATURE
brand Forager is stocked in over 50 stores in Ireland and five in the US. I ended up having to leave my full-time job — which was a scary move as it was a job that I loved — but I really believed in the power of nature.
‘I am just over a year working for myself. I have my skincare brand Forager, I bring people on foraging tours, I do educational talks in libraries and community groups, I bring plants to people who can’t get out and about in what I call an indoor weed wander, and then I am the resident forager on Ireland AM once a month.’
This is why Feebee is an essential part of this year’s Brigit Festival, as she will be bringing wouldbe foragers on a wander around Dublin’s Herbert Park. The festival is a celebration of women, with more than 60 events around the capital celebrating the fierce woman who is seen as a matron saint or Celtic goddess, which fits right in with Feebee’s own spiritual core as much of her work involves relaying the folklore attached to our native species.
‘Ditch witch is an old term — really witches are carers and healers and a ditch witch or a green witch is someone who works with nature,’ she says. ‘You are making healing products or foods with something you would find in a ditch. It’s a term that is used around the world.
‘To me Brigit is a symbol of newness,’ says Feebee. ‘We celebrate her at the time of Imbolc and things are starting to grow again. She’s a symbol of nature, newness, hope and resilience.’
Indeed, Brigit is often pictured with snowdrops or dandelions in her hand, showing that you don’t have to travel anywhere special to find plants with magical properties.
Indeed, on a grassy area close to suburban houses, Feebee spots a huge patch of Alexanders.
To me they just look like weeds but, wading into the centre, Feebee chops a piece off and the smell is divine, like fresh and delicious celery. It’s growing in abundance beside a wall close to the M50.
‘Alexanders were brought into Ireland by the Vikings around the 1500s so are now considered a native plant,’ Feebee says.
‘It can be used like celery as well. It was brought in to stop the vikings on the boats getting scurvy,’ she adds.
If you’ve heard of the phrase ‘as fresh as a daisy’ you might not realise the reason for this is the fact that they contain a specific enzyme that can remove dead skin cells, giving you a youthful vigour.
‘Their latin name is bellis perennis, which means beauty eternal,’ says Feebee. ‘They are one of the super healers we have on the island of Ireland and people don’t look at them like that — instead they run the lawnmower over them. Daisies are known as the poor man’s arnica in that they have this very similar healing property to arnica.
‘They taste like lemons and are fully edible so you can chop them up and sprinkle them over salads or make a tea with six to eight flowerheads in boiling water.’
At this time of year, Feebee says there’s not much around but it seems that every step we take in this ordinary urban environment yields more fascinating facts and edible plants.
‘For me, springtime is the most energised I feel,’ she says. ‘Right now, most of the energy of the plants is in the roots — underground is fizzing with energy — but we do have yarrow, chickweed, dock leaves and nettles. These things will continue to grow throughout the year and each season brings something new. Every year I learn new things. I think you can live 10 lifetimes and still not know enough about plants and nature and wildlife.’
Yarrow’s Irish name is athair talún or father of the land. It’s also edible but if you chew a piece and put it on a wound, it will help to stop it bleeding. It is also known as seven-year love and was once used in bridal bouquets for this reason.
‘Yarrow has analgesic properties — you can chew it on a sore tooth to take the pain away,’ says Feebee. ‘And plantain’s lovely big long leaves are edible but I call them nature’s band aid — you can actually wrap them around a wound and they hold their form and help your skin to heal.’
The much-maligned dandelion used to be grown in fields and picked for its nourishment and nutritional properties. It can be used in salads, soups and teas.
‘During the emergency years, dandelion roots were dried and used as a coffee substitute,’ says Feebee. ‘It’s just a matter of getting people to shift their mindset and look at these plants from a different angle. Chickweed and nettles contain more iron than spinach. I use nettles a lot as I throw them into soups, stews and stirfries — once you cook them, they lose their sting. You can make them into a tea that is a natural antihistamine.’
Obviously, though, nettles must be cooked first before you eat them and, when foraging, you need to know what you are doing, which is where Feebee comes in.
‘The rule of thumb is unless you know what you are picking, don’t touch it!’ she says. ‘You need to be careful. If you want you can download an app to your phone, but when I go foraging, I bring along a field guide.’
Walking with Feebee is a tonic in itself but it is also amazing to see the many plants making their way through the ground on this cold winter day — from the teasels that were used to comb hair and wool for knitting in the past, to the small shoots of wild garlic which will soon be ready to harvest.
With every step, there’s a stillness and a beauty. As we walk, a huge heron passes and Feebee says spotting him for her means it’s going to be a good day. I can see why she’s decided to pack in the office job and spend her days poking in the hedgerows.
‘I found by actually looking at these plants and working with them it completely enriched my life,’ she says. ‘It’s not just that I can make things that make me feel good or other people feel better. But when I go for my walk, I get to see things differently and I can see the beauty in the wild world around us and that’s what I love to teach people — how to have that connection.’
THE Brigit 24 festival runs in Dublin from February 1-5. Feebee is doing two walks, on February 4 and 5, at Herbert Park. For full details see dublin.ie/brigit. For Feebee’s website see forager.ie