New events and courses for the autumn.

Autumnal greetings to all you foragers out there. It has been such a busy season that we haven’t had time to draw breath to write about what we’ve been doing, or share stuff on the website. Suffice to say that it seems to be a very good year for a lot of forageable goodies, and it is proving to be a bit of a vintage year for blackberries. Fungi have also been good, and we found a perfect specimen of a deliciois cep on a foraging walk near Ballymoney recently. However, most of the other edible mushrooms had been largely eaten already by slugs or maggots, so our haul was a bit miserable after all.

I have been checking out the blackthorn bushes for sloes, but it looks like the late spring did for them this year – I haven’t seen any bushes with developing sloes on them at all. I will have to eke out last year’s supply of sloe gin for a bit longer.

We have quite a few workshops and walks arranged for the coming season. Provisional dates for events in September and October are as follows:

Saturday 14th September (10 am) – hedgerow foraging at Ballycastle

Tuesday 17th September (10am) – foraging on Divis Mountain (£charge)

Wednesday 18th September (10am) – blackberry workshop at Mossley Mill (£10)

Saturday 28th September (10am) – hedgerow foraging at Roe Valley Country Park, Limavady

Saturday 5th October – Jubilee Wood, Whitehead (details later)

Saturday 12th October (11am) – foraging at Carnmoney Hill (Woodland Trust)

Wednesday 16th October (10am) – apple workshop at Mossley Mill

Saturday 19th October – hedgerow foraging, Antrim (details later)

Sunday 20th October – seed-gathering Sunday in the Faughan Valley (details later)

Saturday 26th October – birds at Barmouth (details later)

Details will be posted on this site under the Forage Events, Courses and Workshops tab, and on our Facebook page. We look forward to meeting some of you over the next few months. Happy Foraging!