Hedgerow Harvest

   One of the great plusses about cycling around the fens is watching the seasons change, from the cold frost covered mornings of December and January to the warm sun-filled mornings of mid-summer and one time of year I look forward too is the hedgerow harvest. When we enter August and the thoughts of autumn are starting to wander into our heads I'm out there searching through that beautiful natural larder that mother nature hands us each year. The hedgerows are like a foragers supermarket with a huge variety of fruits, nuts and herbs. For me, it's the fruit that fills my backpack from the tiny wild plums to the lager cooking apples that seem to have self-set beside many roads and lanes.

   This year seems to be an amazing year for wild fruit, the blackberries are everywhere, I myself have stood for hours picking them for the freezer. The number of wild plum trees I'm sure is growing each year, I must pass a hundred on my travels here in the flatlands and of course, the Elderberries are everywhere, perfect for jams and wine.

   I must mention it's not just fruit that I gather this time of year, with a lot of the basic food crops grown here in the fens it's now that the potatoes and onions are lifted which means many of these left laying at the edges of fields and roadsides, so I do glean a few just as folk did when I was a kid.