picturesque sites in Worcestershire, Warwickshire and the West Midlands, Staffordshire and Birmingham, but also further afield to Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire and even Norfolk when the foraging takes on a more coastal feel. At all of the places Kerry has permission from the landowners to forage on their land.
Last year courses were able to continue but in smaller groups and a programme of courses for next year have already been scheduled when Kerry hopes they will be able to resume in the usual numbers. She has recently taken on a second instructor, Kevan Palmer, who specialises in fermentation and is also a primal living coach.
Lots of these were actually root crops in their native countries, such as dahlias, but we saw them just as ornamental plants and didn’t realise.
“My mum also bought me a book by former Gardener’s World presenter Alys Fowler who has a city house in Birmingham but the garden is just rammed with edibles, mixing vegetables and edible flowers. I found it all fascinating.”
It was this fascination which led Kerry to alter the way she gardened herself.
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“I started changing my garden to be both edible and pretty. I don’t weed my borders any more, I harvest them,” she laughs. She also started going on a few foraging courses to refresh her knowledge and was surprised at how little lots of people knew about their surroundings.
“It was incredible really,” she recalls. “Places like Colomendy that I went to as a child don’t seem to exist in the same way and lots of adults just don’t seem to have that basic knowledge about tree and plant identification that we were taught when we were kids.”
Sometimes at these courses, Kerry, clearly knowledgeable, would be asked to talk about plants and slowly she began to think of setting up her own courses close to her Warwickshire home where she and her partner now lived.
“It started by accident really. I was working full time on this business park but at lunch time I’d often go off and see what I could forage. Someone then asked if they could come with me and soon there was a group!”
Initially Kerry ran courses at weekends only but as interest grew, she quit the full time job and set up the Foraging Course Company. Courses run mainly from early spring through to late autumn and encompass everything from plants, weeds and leafy greens earlier in the year through to summer berries, flowers and or course mushrooms in the autumn. Many of the courses are in the Midlands, including
“All the courses are slightly different, depending on where we are foraging and what time of year it is,” she explained. “People join for all sorts of reasons, some are interested in gardening, others in cooking and some are concerned about eating commercially produced food and want to reduce their intake of agricultural additives. The common connection is that we all need to eat.”
The courses show participants what foods are edible, and usually their poisonous lookalike with advice on how to use it, what it’s for with a few fascinating facts thrown in for good measure. There are also some wild food samples to try and a digital recipe sheet available afterwards highlighting the species found on the day.
“Some things are edible but shouldn’t be eaten excessively, others are really poisonous. People are most often terrified of mushrooms but I like to point out there are hazards all around us - even the potato leaf is poisonous but we don’t worry about that.”
Courses are generally 3.5 hours long, cost £50 per person and are open to over 18s only. In addition to the group sessions, she also offers private full-day courses with cooking, workshops, taster sessions, corporate events, private walks, lectures and wild-food themed events across the country.
A list of all available courses can be seen on the website
www.foragingcoursecompany.co.uk and gift vouchers are available.
Photos courtesy of Offshoots Photography and The Foraging Course Company
LIVE24-SEVEN.COM
LOCAL PEOPL E FORAGING COURS E COMPANY
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