I’m writing this at the start of November after quite a busy season of teaching and replenishing my stores. The mushrooms are still a-fruiting, there is still some action in the hedgerows and my local patch of three-cornered leek is already looking pretty fulsome. This means there is still plenty out there to forage, but as the days shorten more notably, it is a good time to be a bit more creative. Hence me writing this first entry in my Wildbiome Project diary. I thought it might be a good precursor to a more regular (maybe even weekly?) publishing of my thoughts and menus once the project is underway in spring 2025.

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I have actually already tried to live exclusively on foraged food before - around a year ago, I attempted to see if I could survive for the entirety of November eating food exclusively found in the wild. I lasted just shy of 14 hours. It was a disaster. I had not planned properly and I was eating amazing wild ingredients in such bland ways, ruining what I consider to be one of the fundamental elements of foraged food in its ability to transform dull home-cooking into something special. For breakfast, I had dry pan-fried venison mince with sea lettuce sprinkled over the top, for lunch I had a gnarly feral apple found on my morning dog walk and by teatime I had thrown in the towel at the prospect of a steaming plate of very little greenery found in the gaps of the veg plot. I was miserable and hungry, so I gave up.

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By early 2024, there was a rumour in the foraging world that the Wildbiome Project was to return again in 2025 and would require more participants. After the success of the first project in 2023 (one I bottled joining in on due to taking part in the London Marathon - ‘carbing up’ is tricky from the wild and I didn’t really fancy the idea of chewing on pigeon jerky at mile 22) I thought that this is my chance. Not only would it be for an actual, scientific study, but also there would be other like-minded souls taking part. The power of community was considered to be such a factor in 2023, that I thought I would throw myself in this time, having an actual reason to do it and also not wanting to let anybody down. I will prepare properly this time and, in doing so, avoid the enormous sense of failure from last autumn.

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What is the Wildbiome Project, exactly? It’s a very simple premise on the surface: for a period of either one or three months, each participant has to survive only through eating food sourced from the wild. Nothing from the shops, nothing from the allotment and consuming only flora, funga and fauna that have had no horticultural or agricultural input from humans. There are specific nuances to this project that I won’t entirely go into just yet, but this excludes anything like apples from a tree in your garden; mushrooms that can be found in the wild, such as oyster mushrooms, which are grown in artificial environments; and there is even a conversation to be had around whether pheasants deliberately reared to then be shot for sport would count (check out Shrodinger's Pheasant for a deep dive into that murky world).

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In taking part, we must also be analysed - this is for science, after all - so it is through frequent testing that we will see how our diets will affect factors such as our gut biome, BMI and hormone levels. You name a bodily fluid and it will no doubt be sent first class in a ziplock bag. It is far from scientific to predict exactly what might happen when conducting experiments, mainly to save bias when analysing the results, but drastic changes are to be expected on all fronts, as previously discovered by the last Wildbiome gang. Through this analysis, insights into how our early ancestors may have lived may also be gained, which may in turn draw fascinating links between them and our modern day selves, and even how disconnected we have become from our natural surroundings.

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The practicalities of this project are very much the exciting part. Now that life no longer centres around the hunter-gatherer necessities that we once relied on, eating in such a specific way requires planning and committing time to finding and preparing food that isn’t wrapped in plastic or hybridised to make it more palatable. I’ve invested in yet another freezer and already have tubs and jars labelled ‘WB’ to state very clearly that these are not for consumption before April. Rather than viewing the three months as a period with restrictions, I am actually really excited to get to grips with food I wouldn’t usually bother with due to faff or flavour, instead now more concerned about nutrition. It would be nice to nail something a bit tasty for breakfast, mind you.

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With that in mind, my next Wildbiome Diary entry will explore what I’ve already squirrelled away in my ever-expanding stores.

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‍You can help with the funding of this exciting project by either donating a few quid at https://chuffed.org/project/114196-wildbiome-project-2025-jim-parums . I will also be running a special ‘Wildbiome’ event in the middle of the project, aimed at showcasing some of the ingredients and recipes that have featured so far.