A walk on the WILD SIDE

Robin Harford tells Lydia Tewkesbury how plant-based foraging changed his life

- Lydia Tewkesbury

It is a cold and rainy day when I phone Robin Harford. Through circumstances outside of my control, I find myself conducting the interview hunched under a bandstand, rain pouring, wind thrashing, and a very unfortunately timed incident with the emergency services nearby polluting a large chunk of our conversation with the scream of sirens.

Robin for his part seems prepared to roll with it, only remarking upon the situation with the sirens once. A plant-based forager, educator, author and owner of www.eatweeds.com, Robin is to the point and entirely not what I was expecting — much like foraging, it turns out.

When I’ve thought about foraging in the past — and I haven’t dwelt on it much — I suppose I’ve imagined the sort of activity that fits squarely into the realms of the time-wealthy. Because that’s the only type of person who would feel the inclination to source their lunch from the hedgerows, right?

Not so much, as it turns out. Foraging, Robin reveals, is actually for everyone, and not just that, but it might actually be the key to a lot of things — from healing to food insecurity.

For Robin the past decade-anda-half (give or take) have been about a return — to the land, if that’s how you want to think about it (Robin doesn’t, but we’ll get onto that), but more, really, to himself.

He grew up with the countryside in his soul, and, like so many, spent the long hours of his childhood tramping local fields and sampling the blackberries, wild garlic and sweet chestnuts he found there. He can’t recall when or from who he learned what was safe to eat.