Two contrasting foraging books

[boatman]

Have just bought and read a couple of books, "The Hunter-Gatherer Way, Putting back the Apple" by Ffyona Campbell and "Underwater Foraging-Freediving for Food" by Ian Donald. Ffyona runs foraging walks in Devon and Ian a freediving school in North Cornwall. Both very different books but both absorbing. The Hunter-Gatherer Way is very much about the spirit of their ways of the past and its application to our present and most importantly the future. It has some factual inaccuracies but the writer's enthusiasm from her enlightenment as to the way of the gatherer in Australia to her decision to apply the concept in England and analysis of the seasonal round of the Mesolithic in Devon more than make up for it.


On the face of it Underwater Foraging is a completely different book being very practical in its training hints and strictures on safety. Very useful on that level and the how to of actually foraging underwater and along the seashore is good. However, the author is also concerned with the responsibility we have for conserving the resources we exploit and cannot suppress the sheer joy he feels in the sea and bivvying on its shores.

Both books have a section on eating the finds and the catch which is shorter than in some others and books like The Edible Seashore go into more detail but I am pleased with both and will re-read both more slowly soon.

 

[Macaroon]

A good review, I'll get hold of both and read with interest; thanks for the post,......................atb mac

 

[woodstock]

the underwater food for free will be a welcome addition to our collection thank you, on to Amazon...

 

[Lou]

I just read the hunter gatherer way too, it is an amazing book, very short, but seems to bring together some really interesting ideas about how we foraged in the past. I love the way she uses her intuition to discover what hunters and gatherers would have done with regards to the seasons and the landscape they lived in. I have to say that I have changed my diet to follow her wild food cycle of the year, and really started to think about what I eat and how close it is to what we would have been, and still are able to find in the wild in a specific season. It all seems very obvious now after reading the book, and I knew a lot of what she wrote about already but I think that she helped me to put the final piece of the puzzle together. Her Facebook page seems to be full of little snippets of wisdom too. She had an offer on there, that if you bought her book she would send you a bag of Dorset seaweed. I haven't received mine yet though but I am looking forward to it.

 

[boatman]

Didn't know about the seaweed, wonder if I'll get some.