Late summer into Autumn is such a time of wild food riches that my poor allotment suffers a certain neglect.  Sure I still fly down but only for a quick harvesting raid – deprive the bees of some borage flowers, pick courgettes and if lucky some courgette flowers.  Perhaps gather some blackberries from the path on the way down, and grab some elderberries from the old gnarled tree in the allotment corner, pluck some onions and pull some of the seemingly perpetual rhubarb stems.

First Porcini of the Year! Yeah

However, there is a magnet pull from the great outdoors too.  With twitter feeds full of amazing fungi finds this alone is incentive to shun the poor allotment and rack the grey matter for all the local areas which have yielded fungi finds in the last few years.  Particular culprits are Mark at Galloway Wild Foods @markwildfood (good ID guides) Mushroom Matt@MushroomTable (interesting links to Organic Mushroom Cultivation) and Get Funghi@getfunghi (purchases of dried mushrooms picked in wild West Sweden).

But there is so much more with the fruits of another wild growing season tantalisingly available in this window of free food opportunity.

Here are some of the riches I have picked in the Sheffield area in the last few weeks.  I will add the recipes and the uses I have made of them in the next few posts.

Apples from itinerant wild trees – ideal for PJ taste cider making

Auricularia auricula-judae, known as the Jew’s ear, wood ear, jelly ear

Rosehips at Woodhouse

Cherries

Cherry Plums

HogweedSeed

Rowan Berry Holymoorside

Meadowsweet

Picking cherries Rother Valley

Vulcan_PJtaste_July2014

PJ taste grown artichokes

Blackberry