[David.]

I meant that my total to date this year is now 180 lbs, but when picking I hang a small bucket around my neck so I can use both hands.

Going to stop at 200 lbs or it will be blackberry time again next year before I've turned them all into wine.

[Sally A]

I did plum and blackberry wine ONCE!  The ceiling and walls are still marked from the explosions!

[Calou]

I put an advert on my local freecycle site asking if anyone had any fruit growing that they neither wanted or needed, I offered to pick and collect it (and to gather any bruised fruit that was rotting on their lawn for them) Didn't expect to much of a response but I've been swamped!! Not sure if I'll have time to collect it all now lol but the thought of all that lovely homemade chutney ..................... I'll manage somehow.

[David.]

I put an advert on my local freecycle site asking if anyone had any fruit growing that they neither wanted or needed, I offered to pick and collect it (and to gather any bruised fruit that was rotting on their lawn for them)

That's what I'm about to do for windfall apples (despite now having windfalls/excess from 2 small orchards).

[dawninspain]

Here where we live in Spain people are really into food for free. After it rains (or sometimes while it is still raining) you see people out with carrier bags picking snails off the tall weeds at the roadsides - the snails all climb up what seems like the spindliest weeds and you see them clinging on for dear life as they re blown by the wind.  Wild asparagus and wild young garlic shoots are also picked spring and autumn. We are surrounded by orange groves and apparently the law is that if the grove is unfenced you can help yourself to a few each day just for personal consumption. The various varieties of orange and mandarins ripen at different times so it is possible to pick fruit from late October up to June the next year.

[muntjac]

Here where we live in Spain people are really into food for free. After it rains (or sometimes while it is still raining) you see people out with carrier bags picking snails off the tall weeds at the roadsides - the snails all climb up what seems like the spindliest weeds and you see them clinging on for dear life as they re blown by the wind.  Wild asparagus and wild young garlic shoots are also picked spring and autumn. We are surrounded by orange groves and apparently the law is that if the grove is unfenced you can help yourself to a few each day just for personal consumption. The various varieties of orange and mandarins ripen at different times so it is possible to pick fruit from late October up to June the next year.

doing ya best to make me jelos aint ya mrs  :shock:  

[David.]

I've just picked/pressed enough cooking apple windfalls up from the Parish Council's planting scheme on the village recreation ground to make 2.5 galls of 6% ABV cider.

Going to add a little sugar before fermenting to 7.5% ABV and call it "Wreck Creation" cider.

[Sally A]

Nice name David, can your next creation be called "Blaargh........wot u looking at?"

[dawninspain]

Hows this for food for free - it even comes delivered to your door:





In the 1980s we lived in East London and had Epping Forest literally at the end of our road.  In the summer farmers had the right to put their cattle out to graze wherever they liked in the forest and would turn them out in the spring and round them up in the autumn.  If the summer was hot and the vegetation had dried up in the forest the cows would wander down the roads eating the plants in the gardens! Many a traffic jam was caused by cattle on the roads.

When we lived there we probably got more food for free than anywhere else we have lived.  There were loads of blackberries, puffballs and other mushrooms, crab apples and damsons, hawthorns (for hawthorn jelly - a lot of work but wonderful jelly), elderflowers and elderberries, sloes for sloe gin etc etc.

The downside was that a good summer also brought out a good crop of flashers in the bushes and by the time we moved away it was too dangerous to walk on the common and in the forest by yourself even with a dog.

A brillant book is by Gail Duff - The Countryside Cookbook. Out of print I think but available used. She takes you through the seasons telling you what to look out for and there are some very good recipes.

[David.]

I lived in a (rented) farmhouse myself until shortly before I met my wife (who comes from a farming family) and know what's it like to have a herd of bullocks go through the garden.