How can CROW prohibit bathing or boating in non-tidal waters? Certainly it cannot on flowing "navigable" rivers for which there is a right of navigation on all except those where the navigation has been specifically closed by Act of Parliament. Disuse or neglect cannot close a navigation right. Have a look on Song of the Paddle for details.
Foraging / surviving from the land
- Thread starter Mouse040
- Start date
I obviously eat more than the average amount of fruit and vegetables - fruit seems increasingly to come from South America, and vegetables from North Africa. We try to at least go for the European option if not always British, where sane. The situation that confuses me is where at one point we imported about as much beef from Argentina as we exported to Argentina, and this apparently made economic sense?! Like selling ice to eskimos...and buying it from them at the same time!
Total area is apparently
243,610 km[SUP]2[/SUP]
94,060 sq mi
Or in acres
60,197,341
But that is not discounting water ways which isn't really land mass... and not much good for arable farming on water
243,610 km[SUP]2[/SUP]
94,060 sq mi
Or in acres
60,197,341
But that is not discounting water ways which isn't really land mass... and not much good for arable farming on water
Exactly - I pity even the guy whose allotment of land is on rough moor, or mountainside. There is less than an acre of land per person to live on, get water from, get fuel from, grow food, store food etc.
Interesting discussion. I will stick my head above the parapet and confirm it was me who made the original statement to Mouse040. I based my belief on the fact that you will not always catch animals every time you try to and that once you have foraged all the suitable plants in a given area you will have to travel far searching for more. All this means more energy is used than gained. One week of rain (not uncommon in this country) is enough to dampen anyone's spirits and reduce their foraging capabilities. There is also talk of various processes for preparing foraged food which again uses lots of energy.
Maybe by poaching and stealing crops you could give it a good go but that's naughty
The Winter would prove very difficult even in our climate.
Would love to be proved wrong but many have tried and failed.
I think you stated the problem very well. Theoretical foraging, or foraging on a farm or near farmland is very different from actual foraging in the wilderness. Sure you can eat cattail and burdock, but unless you have a nice spot already in mind where they grow, and you are the only person who has access to it, finding those resources in most areas requires massive expenditures of energy. Similarly, with resources like acorns, they are available for a limited time during the year. Unless you make a massive effort to process and preserve that food for the rest of the year, you are going to have serious problems.
I also want to be clear that here I am talking about foraging in the wilderness. I am not sure how things are in the UK. A lot of what I have seen when people give examples of foraging is them doing it in what i would consider farmland. Same thing with hunting. There is a big difference between that and actually doing it in the woods.
"Don't suppose you have an opinion on the original point this thread was created to express ,which was is it possible for a single person to sustain themselves by foraging in this day and age"
Yes, but in limited circumstances. The person would need totally unhindered access and use of 1 or 2 square miles of lowland forest with some wetlands and a stream (New Forest? Forest of Dean?). Complete freedom to trap/snare game/birds and fish (not legal nowadays). The person would need a very good knowledge of the wild edibles that can be dug up (tubers etc.) cooked and eaten, because there are a hell of a lot which will kill you, and the poisonous ones can be growing right next to the good ones, and not looking that much different (e.g. water parsnip (hemlock) , wild parsnip (tasty).
I live in the NE of the USA (Massachusetts) and since arable farming decreased rapidly from the middle of the 19th century, mush of the area is going back to forest. This is now supporting a pretty large population of Black Bear which were almost extinguished in the area by the mid 19th century, which live by foraging. SO if you have a big enough area and are not too fussy about what you eat (grubs, snails, frogs etc.) . I was hiking in the white mountains last week, and an adult black bear popped out of the forest onto the trail in front of me. It looked, to me, very well nourished, and big. Fortunately it just rambled across the trail and into the forest on the other side. The bear population has grown so large that we have adolescent bear incidents every year where I live in the suburbs just 20 \miles west of Boston.
Yes, but in limited circumstances. The person would need totally unhindered access and use of 1 or 2 square miles of lowland forest with some wetlands and a stream (New Forest? Forest of Dean?). Complete freedom to trap/snare game/birds and fish (not legal nowadays). The person would need a very good knowledge of the wild edibles that can be dug up (tubers etc.) cooked and eaten, because there are a hell of a lot which will kill you, and the poisonous ones can be growing right next to the good ones, and not looking that much different (e.g. water parsnip (hemlock) , wild parsnip (tasty).
I live in the NE of the USA (Massachusetts) and since arable farming decreased rapidly from the middle of the 19th century, mush of the area is going back to forest. This is now supporting a pretty large population of Black Bear which were almost extinguished in the area by the mid 19th century, which live by foraging. SO if you have a big enough area and are not too fussy about what you eat (grubs, snails, frogs etc.) . I was hiking in the white mountains last week, and an adult black bear popped out of the forest onto the trail in front of me. It looked, to me, very well nourished, and big. Fortunately it just rambled across the trail and into the forest on the other side. The bear population has grown so large that we have adolescent bear incidents every year where I live in the suburbs just 20 \miles west of Boston.
One person or a small group could do it easily in the UK if they had sufficient land, especially if there was an arrangement to move according to the season and access to a decent bit of coast was available. To repeat from from previous threads, the Mesolithic and earlier peoples managed it quite nicely because here we are today. Contemporary fishermen live by hunting and trapping.
Our foraging hero will be equipped with a farming awareness thus improving habitat to encourage deer to hang around etc might well skew the result, similarly nurturing forage food plants is moving away from hunter-gathering but is an obvious thing to do.
Hardly a realistic 'living off the land' scenario though is it? Going back a thousand years or more and there were a lot fewer people with free access to far more wild game and greens. Down here there are rabbits and hare but the only truly abundant meat on the loose is sheep which would mean stealing from a farmer with each kill. This topic comes up on a regular basis but the fact is nobody actually goes out and does it; certainly for a realistic period that reflects the changing seasons here in the UK.
as i said earlier Fergus the forager was trying it and he knows his plants etc but huner gatherers need to spend most of their time and energy gatehring food it becomes your job much easier in small groups as you see with hunter gatherer tribes that exist today but probably self limiting on to many in one area which can b quite a large one area wise tho we have more per sqr mile than the african shavanna.
We have also discussed before that the hunter-gatherer in a rich environment, or even the Kalahari Desert, does not normally work nearly as long hours as the farmer. After all why do they need to? Nature does the replenishing while the other must
" plough and sow, to reap and mow,
And be a farmer's boy,"
" plough and sow, to reap and mow,
And be a farmer's boy,"
There is a great misconception that Mesolithic people just went into the forest and hunted and gathered food. All of those societies had not only clear division of labor, allowing for those activities on a communal scale, but also had generations of developed knowledge not just of the edible plants, but more importantly of the exact location and time of year when they could be gathered, or game could be hunted. The hunting and gathering a lot more closely resembled farming than what we would associate with someone walking into the forest and trying to feed themselves. There are still communities which largely depend on hunting and gathering. Virtually all of them depend not just on knowledge of what is edible but exactly when and where the animal or plant can be obtained. A particular fish may be available in a specific river only one week during the year, and the following week it will be in a different part of the river, or in a different river all together. A particular bird might be available for an extremely limited amount of time. Same thing goes for plants. Those early communities, much like the ones today which live in a similar manner greatly depended on knowing exactly where each plant grown, when it grows, where and when particular animals travel, feed and reproduce and then made a dedicated communal effort to gather and preserve those resources during the short windows when they are available for the rest of the year. This is not general bushcraft knowledge or knowledge of what is edible. It's easy to talk about migrating to find food, but unless you know exactly where you are going, it will be of no use.
It is possible for a person to do it these days if they are lucky, and if they have prior knowledge of exactly where the food resources will be and have it mapped out depending on the time of year. As others have also noted, certain disregard for the law is also required.
I'll also add that these days our perception of available food has been skewed greatly by agriculture and farming. "Wild" food is much more available today than it ever was. Most of the plants and animals that we look to as being abundant would be extremely hard to locate in an actual wilderness. You can hunt rabbits next to a farm indefinitely. Try finding a rabbit in the actual forest, away from any agricultural land. If we are going to talk about surviving through foraging, I say the area where the theoretical foraging is to take place should be wild enough so that it takes less time to gather the food than it does to walk to a supermarket and buy it.
It is possible for a person to do it these days if they are lucky, and if they have prior knowledge of exactly where the food resources will be and have it mapped out depending on the time of year. As others have also noted, certain disregard for the law is also required.
I'll also add that these days our perception of available food has been skewed greatly by agriculture and farming. "Wild" food is much more available today than it ever was. Most of the plants and animals that we look to as being abundant would be extremely hard to locate in an actual wilderness. You can hunt rabbits next to a farm indefinitely. Try finding a rabbit in the actual forest, away from any agricultural land. If we are going to talk about surviving through foraging, I say the area where the theoretical foraging is to take place should be wild enough so that it takes less time to gather the food than it does to walk to a supermarket and buy it.
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And recent archaeological work has shown that the Mesolithic probably had some permanent houses which might have been occupied seasonally or full-time depending on local resources.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howick_house
http://www.ncl.ac.uk/howick/images/reconstruction.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howick_house
http://www.ncl.ac.uk/howick/images/reconstruction.jpg
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I seem to recall Fergus the forager tried it, but not from scratch, he was also supplementing his gatherings with stuff he had been storing from previous years...That's a bit like saying I'm going to live for a year but can I use Tesco's to get my food if I haven't quite got enough to live on...
xylaria
Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
I'm with rg598 on this one.
Our ancestors managed it, but they managed it because they were seasonally aware and actively sought out the best resources, whether that was for volume of ease of acquisition.....or did they because of some unknown belief or cultural practices?
We also know from the archaeological record that though they maybe didn't farm, they did store foods. Cooked in their shells hazelnuts do not sprout but keep very well indeed (still edible after two years was the last experiment I heard). We also have stone lined and clay sealed 'sinks' where we believe shellfish were kept fresh.....and we have good evidence for almost industrial scale fish smoking in the Hebrides .....that knowledge of 'how to' had long roots.....and talking of roots, the overwintering roots are plentiful in the UK, have a look for 'famine foods' for examples.
To really understand the domestic economy of the people of the past; the resources they sourced and used, they have to be considered not only in situ, but in the frame of their own past. Humans pass on knowledge, we're still doing it here but we no longer live the lifestyle that is solely reliant on the knowledge of how to obtain food all year round from our lands and waters; we no longer live under their geas or cultural choices either.
Some interesting reading
http://arheologija.ff.uni-lj.si/documenta/pdf31/31thomas.pdf
http://www.scottishheritagehub.com/sites/default/files/u12/ScARF Neolithic June 2012 v2 .pdf
http://www.scottishheritagehub.com/sites/default/files/u12/ScARF Iron Age Sept 2012.pdf
cheers,
M
Our ancestors managed it, but they managed it because they were seasonally aware and actively sought out the best resources, whether that was for volume of ease of acquisition.....or did they because of some unknown belief or cultural practices?
We also know from the archaeological record that though they maybe didn't farm, they did store foods. Cooked in their shells hazelnuts do not sprout but keep very well indeed (still edible after two years was the last experiment I heard). We also have stone lined and clay sealed 'sinks' where we believe shellfish were kept fresh.....and we have good evidence for almost industrial scale fish smoking in the Hebrides .....that knowledge of 'how to' had long roots.....and talking of roots, the overwintering roots are plentiful in the UK, have a look for 'famine foods' for examples.
To really understand the domestic economy of the people of the past; the resources they sourced and used, they have to be considered not only in situ, but in the frame of their own past. Humans pass on knowledge, we're still doing it here
but we no longer live the lifestyle that is solely reliant on the knowledge of how to obtain food all year round from our lands and waters; we no longer live under their geas or cultural choices either.Some interesting reading
http://arheologija.ff.uni-lj.si/documenta/pdf31/31thomas.pdf
http://www.scottishheritagehub.com/sites/default/files/u12/ScARF Neolithic June 2012 v2 .pdf
http://www.scottishheritagehub.com/sites/default/files/u12/ScARF Iron Age Sept 2012.pdf
cheers,
M
What hasn't been mentioned yet is the possiblity of simply stealing either by stealth or by strength that which you need to survive. Throughout our documented history, and presumably beyond that, we have been stealing or taking from each other simply because we wanted to. If you make that "want" sufficiently demanding, such as the starvation of your kids, you will see people doing it all over again. The "want" must overide the perceived risk which is why in our modern society there is very little of that going on. But reduce the amount of food available to people and the glue that binds our society together will start to unravel and quite ordinary people will start to do extraordinary things to survive.
