Food for free is a passion of mine – I never walk the dog without a bag in my pocket in which to stash bounty. Whether it’s berries to make into jam, mushrooms for breakfast or nettle tips for soup, everything finds its way home. 

This is a hobby with a long legacy – my grandmother took me to collect cowslips and elderflowers to make wine, blackberries to add to apple crumble and windfall plums for jam.

When she died I inherited her recipe book, a cornucopia of the delightful and, it has to said, the gruesome. For example, I’ve never quite had the courage to try her recipe for pig cheeks – the memory of half a pig’s head floating in a bucket in Grandma’s pantry, and my sister’s screams, are more than enough to put me off!

But when my husband and I were getting married we wanted an old-fashioned country wedding, complete with elderflower sparkling wine for the guest cup, and so out came Grandma’s little red book.  The wedding was to take place on August Bank Holiday Monday, giving us plenty of time to collect baskets and baskets of elderfl owers through May and June, and allow it to ferment over the summer. 

The weather was so hot, however, that the wine became what is known as ‘lively’. It didn’t pour out of the bottles so much as leap, much to my husband-to-be’s increasing anxiety. Eventually he rang the venue, and was advised to bring in the bottles and let them cool down in their walk-in fridges.

He reports that he never in his life felt so worried as when he was driving 70 bottles of volatile, homemade sparkling wine over road bumps through town in our convertible Triumph Herald. He was worried he’d be arrested if one exploded!

Luckily, all was well. On our wedding day the corks flew over the nearby 10ft hedge as soon as the bottles were opened.  The wine itself behaved perfectly and stayed in each bottle until it was poured, much to the delight of the guests, who couldn’t believe it was barely 1 per cent alcohol, such was the bonhomie of the atmosphere. Magical stuff .

Weekend fun

Our daughters seem to have inherited, or perhaps just acquired, our liking for nature’s free treats: top of their summer weekend activities is crayfi shing in the local (very clean) river.  The ones they’re after are the large, invading American crayfish, which are a pest, so the children are actually doing the environment a favour, as well as catching dinner. With bacon on the end of a weighted string, a couple of dozen of these beauties can be pulled out in a few hours, with patience. Some are no bigger than a robust tiger prawn, others are as big as a young lobster and just as ferocious! They’re best plunged into a pan of boiling water or barbecued, and served warm with a mayonnaise dip.

Spring and summer also bring free wild ratatouille ingredients, such as young dandelion leaves, nettle tips, dead nettle shoots, broom buds and hawthorn buds (the fan shapes are so pretty).

Many of them can be eaten raw in a salad and are especially tasty if mixed with edible flowers – nasturtiums, clover and marigold petals. Elderflowers are delicious in fritters (using the lightest of tempura batter) served with vanilla ice-cream.

My children enjoy crystallising other edible flowers: violets are wonderful on white chocolate mousse. Then there are rosebuds and petals, lilac, apple blossom and primroses, to add to the top of cakes and puddings, give away as gifts in fairy-sized boxes – or just to eat in one decadent picnic in the sunshine.

I pick the deepest red rose petals in my large rose garden to make a sumptuous confiture de petal de rose using a recipe given to me by a French relative.

Autumn’s abundance

Of all the seasons, autumn has to be top of the list for sheer choice and abundance. With blackberrying the staple social activity, I make Grandma’s apple and blackberry cake as a first choice, but over the years we have perfected blackberry wine, discovered that pickled blackberries are delicious with Cheddar, and that blackberry vodka is a pretty addition to the Christmas drinks cabinet or put in a gift-box for a special friend.

I sometimes mix blackberries with japonica quince gathered from a bush at my parents’ house. It makes a glorious jelly with an exquisite perfume and is simply more-ish on hot buttered wholemeal toast.

Sometimes we receive a brace of pheasants during the season, and blackberry syrup is a wonderful accompaniment to the roasted bird, although rowan jelly is a nice alternative.

The rowan tree is often the first to bear fruit in the autumn and is surprisingly common in towns as well as hedgerows. Its clusters of orange berries can be skimmed off the branch with a fork just as with elderberries. The jelly is jewel-red and quite sharp – perfect with rich meat or any kind of cheese.

Crab-apples make a lovely jelly – an especially acceptable gift when spiced with cinnamon and nutmeg; while hedgerow jelly uses up the best of any wild fruit you can find: blackberries, hawthorns, bullaces (wild plums), crab-apples, hips and sloes.

Squashes are not always free but are usually available in such abundance that it feels criminal not to do something with them. Our family loves pumpkin pie, made the American way and served with ice-cream, and pumpkin preserve… it’s so pretty we almost hate to eat it.

Chutneys are the other great harvest-time bounty, and the choice can be almost overwhelming between what you can gather free in the hedgerows and the surplus you will receive from neighbours and friends. One of my favourites is Irish whiskey marrow chutney: a great way of using the ‘ones that got away’ in the courgette patch and apple orchard. Mixed with a little Irish whiskey, it’s a great keeper that matures to a rich, mellow finish – perfect with cheese on Boxing Day. (The recipe for Millionaire’s Marrow Chutney can be found in the WI Book of Jams and Other Preserves.)

Later in the autumn, nuts start to ripen, and my children and I collect hazelnuts and sweet chestnuts when we are walking home after school, as the dusk gathers in. Mostly these get eaten straight from the shell or husk, or roasted on the fire, but any surplus might find their way into crunchy harvest butter made with wild plums or apples, later to be added to pies and tarts throughout the winter, and served with thick custard or crème fraîche.

Finally, we come to mushrooms – an early morning treat, these, gathered while walking the dog in the morning mist. My grandfather would put a bucket over favoured areas where horse mushrooms grew – he believed it made them grow sweeter and larger. They are certainly delicious fried straight up with bacon for a proper breakfast, as are spotted ink caps, which must be used almost immediately they are gathered (it’s obviously essential to know your mushrooms before you pick them, though).

Food for free is nature’s bounty, despite the chemicals overloading our countryside. But it hardly needs saying that you should avoid areas of high pollution and chemicals from intensive farming when you are gathering your harvest.

With a little care you can still find a huge amount of ‘food for free’ in the hedgerows, along abandoned railway cuttings and beside canals. And let’s face it, it only adds to the pleasure of the table to know that what you are about to eat didn’t have to be bought or grown. Santé!

GRANDMA’S SPARKLING ELDERFLOWER WINE

Pick the elderflowers (the really fragrant ones) at the end of a hot, sunny day. Normally the natural yeast on the flowers is enough to get it going, although if it doesn’t start naturally after a couple of days you can add a pinch of dried yeast.

1 gallon cold water

750 g (1½ lb) sugar

7 heads of elderflowers

2 lemons, sliced

2 tbsp white wine vinegar

Bring the water to the boil andpour it over the sugar. When cold,add the elderflower heads, lemon slices and white wine vinegar. Cover and leave to stand for 24 hours.

Syphon off and bottle, using strong bottles (ideally champagne bottles). Cork well as this wine will be very fizzy. Drink when the wine is young – ideally within six months.