Getting to know the Land - Foraging

Yes, you did understand correctly!

There's nothing quite like foraging to let the landscape sink in, both literally and metaphorically speaking.

Get yourself a good guidebook, a course if you can is even better, and get put there and find what edibles grow on your doorstep. If you're unsure it goes without saying: don't eat it! But after a while even he scarediest of cats will learn to recognise some edibles. Fruit is certainly one of the easiest things to learn. Mabey's 'Food for Free' is a good place to start ( though some of what he decides is edible I've never been at all keen to try - cleavers?! Eeew) . Even if you can't bring yourself to the eating side of things, just learning what things are and where they can be found brings you closer to the living reality of the land.

Lammas is celebrated by lots of Pagans, but it was never something that had any real meaning to me. And, let's face it, if it's not real then what is the point? That changed for me when I first started foraging as a means to find the Spirit of Place. 

Lammas, Anglo-saxon in origin, is Hlaf mass, or the loaf mass. Essentially a harvest festival. But living in a world that has little to do with harvests I didn't really get why there were three harvest celebrations in the Neo-pagan calendar (a post for another time), and Lammas in particular didn't stand out. 

When I started my foraging adventures it dawned on me that in my part of the world (very much an Anglo-Saxon area) Lammas coincides with the time that the trees are giving over their ripened fruit. Now even a little googling will tell you that Lammas is also known as the festival of first fruits. 

*light bulb moment*

Are you surprised at how very dense I can be sometimes?

And suddenly Lammas has a very real meaning to me. Around about Lammas you will probably find me making fruit leathers from wild plums... Yum!

Now while you're at it, watch out for other notable plants you see. Go home, find our what they are, and what they do...

... And obviously make a map! Where are all the apple trees? Where are the cobnuts? Where can you find comfrey growing wild? All these little things slowly build up your awareness of the land, and almost without you noticing it you start to become more sensitive to the Spirit of Place.