The wild strawberry is a plant which many people know about but few bother with. To my mind that view encapsulates the entire ethos of foraging in two short words - why bother? The rewards are limited, sometimes downright difficult to collect, fiddly to prepare, often lack any nutritional value (mushrooms for example) and occasionally, seemingly impossible to find (alas, I have yet to stumble upon a morel!)
Yet I often become over excited, agitated even, when I discover some relatively unknown food item in the undergrowth, grassy bank or tree. Perhaps that makes me sad, old or easily pleased - I don't know- what I do know is that I am not alone.
Many of us enjoy finding food items in the wild, shooting and preparing our own game, and making Jellies, jams, chutneys and alcoholic beverages for our own consumption or to give to friends and family. It can be awfully fiddly and time consuming, yet somehow it's worth it, particularly when spooning a good dollop of greengage jelly onto breakfast toast, heaping a year old chutney onto a ripe cheese or sampling a nip of bramble vodka from the hip flask on a cold December morning.
The humble wild strawberry is one such foraging item that takes a long time to gather in sufficient quantities to achieve any lasting preserve, but add afew to your breakfast cereal or to your raspberries and ice cream and those few moments of activity become very worthwhile.
