• MY COUNTRY PASSION
Retired gardener Jo Rymer has enjoyed foraging for wild food and medicinal herbs since she was child – she now shares her passion with her grandchildren
Jo Rymer has been foraging for food in the wild Yorkshire countryside almost all her life
I live in Driffield in East Riding, Yorkshire, surrounded by beautiful rolling wolds and a stunning coastline. I’ve been foraging since I was about five, most people foraged then. Late summer, we’d pick bilberries and blackberries and when back at home, I’d help my mum make jam with the fruit. I loved the smell of the berries cooking and eating the finished article for the rest of the year.
Now I forage in the countryside, the beach, even my tiny garden, where I leave edible plants that people call weeds to grow, like dandelions and wild garlic. In the hedgerows I pick nettles, chickweed and Jack-by-the-hedge [garlic mustard] – a big favourite. I make a pasta dish with the leaves, sautéing them in olive oil with chilli flakes and garlic and anything else I fancy and when it’s done add it to cooked spaghetti, drizzle with more olive oil and grated Parmesan. The leaves taste good in risotto too. Dandelion leaves are also lovely in small amounts in a salad if you like bitter greens – and can be used medicinally to treat warts.
I’m always on the lookout for wild food when I’m out and about. It gives me great satisfaction to find something new. It makes me feel like I’m holding on to a historical part of the past and keeping it alive somehow. I like to take my grandchildren with me to try and pass on the foraging spirit and knowledge. I enjoy them sharing my excitement. We find lots of foods that are different from the everyday stuff in the shops, and it’s free.
We forage for seaweed at the coast, but it’s rather cold up here for many varieties. We mainly get sea lettuce on this coast, which I dry, and when I make soda bread add it to the dough to replace salt, or even just eat it dried on its own as a snack.
I forage any time of year but not on a rainy day. In autumn, I pick sloes to make sloe gin, burdock for beer, rosehips for syrup, plus crab apples, damsons and walnuts. Other times it’s elderflowers for elderflower champagne, and violet flowers to eat.
This time of year, my favourite spots are Otley Chevin for bilberries, a rare thing to find in the UK, and Sewerby beach for sea lettuce, it’s a fabulous beach with sand, rocks and pebbles.
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Learn what to pick and what to leave behind on a foraging course, available across the UK at wildfooduk.com or eatweeds.co.uk